


Beyond the Walls

by coalitiongirl



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/F, Gen, Swan-Mills Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-27
Updated: 2014-02-20
Packaged: 2018-01-10 04:49:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 27,558
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1155285
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coalitiongirl/pseuds/coalitiongirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post-midseason finale, one year later. An amnesiac Henry returns to his grandparents' castle in the Enchanted Forest, where he quickly grows fascinated with the mysterious sorceress who's training his mother in magic– and who's the one person in the castle he's forbidden to ever meet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This was supposed to be a oneshot, but I'm still recovering from last week's 14k delivery so a chaptered fic it is! It's all already outlined, and it'll probably come out to 3-4 parts that I'll add as soon as they're written. Hope y'all enjoy! <3

You can’t believe you’ve spent the past week in a castle.

 

You can’t believe you’ve spent the past week in a castle _bored_.

 

But it’s been nearly a week since your ma drank that vial that the pirate had given her and suddenly began talking about fairytales and another realm and the _savior_ , and since you’d both jumped into this other world to help out against a threat that is, supposedly, the Wicked Witch of the West from the Wizard of Oz. You’d barely arrived and met the woman who’s just about Ma’s age and somehow your grandmother when Ma had had to head out on recon with her newfound dad and an army of knights, leaving you behind.

 

And maybe you’re sulking a little, because hanging out with your grandmother could be kind of cool but you want to be with Ma, exploring this new world, whether or not you don’t have the memories that she’s regained. It’s always been you and Ma until now, and you’ve always come first, so it’s hard to think about her ever having another priority. You still come first for her, but she’s a hero in this world and you’re supposed to be a hero too, so you tell her to go and force a smile and then mope around the castle for a week, wishing you could be out there.

 

Grams is nice once you get over the whole Snow White thing. She shows you how to shoot with a bow and arrow and she says she’ll have someone teach you to ride a horse properly soon and she’s quick to fill you in on the situation in the surrounding kingdom. But she’s also busy all the time and the castle is so big and empty when she’s having private councils. You try sitting in on one and get dirty looks from the nobles who attend, and after that Grams suggests that you might be better off in the library or out on the grounds during.

 

So you start exploring, and that’s when you finally start to enjoy yourself. You rap on walls and listen for hollow wood, and you poke at stones to find the loose ones. It’s a _castle_ , after all, the fairytale kind you’ve imagined all your life, and there are hidden passageways everywhere, secret rooms within walls and under floors and spanning level after level of the turrets.

 

Grams laughs when you tell her what you’ve been doing. “I was the same way when I grew up. Every nook and cranny of my castle!” she reminisces, an odd, sad little smile crossing her face. “My stepmother was the only one who could track me down when I would go wandering. I only found out later that even she needed her magic to find me.”

 

“You really had an evil stepmother?” you want to know, and there’s something pressing against your heart when you ask, some awareness that this is _important_ , linked to the memories that no one’s been able to give back to you yet.

 

Grams stares at you for a long moment. “I had a stepmother,” she says at last. “It’s very complicated, Henry.” Which is her code phrase for everything that has to do with the life you can’t remember, and you scowl and look at the ground.

 

“Whatever,” you snap back, turning for the door.

 

Grams sighs, and you can’t be too mad when she looks so pained about it. “And Henry?” she calls after you. “Remember, stay away from the upper levels of the east wing of the castle.”

 

* * *

 

 

You’re not supposed to go to the east wing. You’d asked jokingly if there’s a wilting rose floating up there somewhere, but Grams had barely laughed and instead sat you down and told you the truth. It’s more than anyone else has given you since Ma took that potion, even Ma, and you drink in every word wonderingly.

 

There’s a woman there, a powerful sorceress who’d saved everyone in the kingdom the year before and brought them home. And you and Ma had been a part of her spell, the part that had separated you from the rest of the realm and left you in New York with no memories of the years you’d spent with your extended family.

 

Ma had been freed from it with the memory potion, but you’re still caught up in the spell, and you’re the trigger that could undo the whole thing and destroy everyone in the Enchanted Forest if you meet the spell’s caster. “Even a shared glance from across a room could be enough,” Grams warns. “Regina doesn’t know exactly what constitutes _meeting_ according to the curse. We can’t risk you ever seeing her.”

 

“Is she trapped in the east wing because I’m here now?” you want to know. You wonder if she holds a grudge against you for taking her freedom away, and if it’s bad that you might have made an enemy out of a powerful magician. Your heart hurts at the thought of this woman you don’t know hating you and you don’t know why.

 

But Grams shakes her head vigorously. “No, of course not, Henry! She would gladly stay there forever if it meant that you were here.” You frown at her certainty and she flushes, suddenly guilty. “I mean, she’s a bit of a loner. And doesn’t get on very well with anyone. I think she prefers the solitude.”

 

You’re dying to ask more questions, to find out more about this sorceress who you can never see, but Grams is stubbornly silent on the topic and you scope out the secret passageways that lead to the east wing, careful to never leave the safety of the closed walls.

 

And when Grams tells you that there’s going to be a private council and that this Regina will be present, you nod somberly and agree to stay out by the lake until it’s over, widening your eyes with extra earnestness.

 

She squeezes her eyes closed and rests a resigned hand on her swollen belly. “Just…don’t be seen, Henry. You know the risks.”

 

You really do like Grams a lot, you think.

 

* * *

 

There’s a whole staircase in the walls behind the war room, leading up to a secret room that’s stocked with old-fashioned guns and bows. It must have been for snipers during unexpected attacks on the castle, but now it’s your place when Grams holds these meetings, huddled on the stairs with your eyes glued to the thin cracks in the stone that look into the war room.

 

Today you’re watching the door, waiting for the infamous Regina to arrive, but it’s just Grams and Ruby and a few lesser princes and princesses you know from past meetings. “She’s late,” one grumbles, drumming his fingers against the table. “It’s bad enough that she’s even coming, but does she have to be-“

 

“You know Regina,” Ruby interjects hastily before he can continue. The other nobles seem equally irritated and anxious, eyes darting to the doors and faces tense with unpleasant scowls. “She likes to make an entrance.”

 

And an entrance she does make, the doors bursting open with magical assistance as a woman who _must_ be Regina, if only because of the way that your heart clenches when you see her, strides in. She’s wearing an elaborate dress, black and more ostentatious than anything Grams has ever worn- and Grams is queen!- and her hair is piled on top of her head, falling in stiff locks around a face that looks down at everyone else in the room as though they’re undeserving.

 

You think you should be afraid of her, like everyone else who isn’t Grams seems to be when she casts her eyes around the room, catching hastily ducking gazes and sneering in return, but you can also see the way her own eyes drop when she takes a seat, as though she’s exhausted by her own disdain.

 

You wonder if she looks at everyone like that because otherwise they’ll be the ones sneering back at her instead. You wonder if she’d look at you like that if you ever met, or if she’d regard you like she does Grams, with guarded dislike that does a poor job of masking what you think is respect.

 

You wonder how it is that you can look at this stranger and feel like you know her so well already.

 

“The king has sent back word with Captain Hood,” Grams begins, nodding to one of the men you don’t recognize. “The Witch still believes that Regina is dead, and has no concept of the threat that Emma may pose.”

 

You watch Regina closely when your Ma’s name comes up. She’d chosen you two to curse, right? There must have been a reason for it beyond all the magic that Ma is supposed to have. But Regina’s eyes are even more shuttered than before, her gaze intent on Grams. “You should bring Miss Swan back as soon as possible, if I’m to train her. Knowledge of the _terrain_ won’t do any good when the Witch subjugates you all and we’re helpless to resist.” She curls her lip with disgust.

 

“I know what you think about it,” Grams sighs, and she looks nervous for the first time since Regina had entered the room. “Still, it’s good that one of you will be able to get a grasp on what we’re up against. And we can’t risk you leaving the castle in any form and revealing you to the Witch.”

 

Regina huffs, leaning back in her chair, her lips stubborn and set. You make the same face when you’re cranky, and you grin a little at seeing it on this supposedly terrifying sorceress’s features.

 

Your heart hurts again, aching and insubstantial, and you touch your chest with the tips of your fingers and exhale slowly.

 

* * *

 

You follow her back to her quarters, climbing in and out of passageways just out of sight, and though she glances around a few times as though she can sense your eyes on her back, she doesn’t try to track you down.

 

You hurriedly make your way along the twisty corridors that surround the east wing, keeping an ear to the wall and following the _click-click-click_ of her rapid footsteps along the way, and when you finally hear her pause and a heavy stone door open, you’re glad to sink to the floor and find an eyehole.

 

She twists her wrist in a flourish and you see your first magic since that magic bean on the Jolly Roger, but this is seamless instead of flashy holes torn into reality, a mere twitch of the air as her elaborate dresses disappear and are replaced with a pair of slacks and a blue blouse that would have looked more at home in New York than in the Enchanted Forest. You’re fascinated. You know the story, that they’d all spent several decades in your realm by the workings of the original curse, but Regina is the first one here who you’ve seen _dress_ like it, who seems infinitely more comfortable in modern clothing than the fairytale dresses.

 

The dress had been her armor around the others, and you think you understand now how uncomfortable she’d been in the war room, surrounded by people she doesn’t like and who clearly dislike and fear her. Maybe Grams is right, and she’s a loner by choice. Maybe you didn’t change anything by coming to the castle, and you suddenly hurt for this mysterious woman, who’s held prisoner by the hatred of others, even though she’s working for someone as good as Snow White.

 

She sighs to herself and slips out of her shoes, padding over to the room to her right, and you hurry to find a new peeking place there. It’s a room you haven’t seen before in your brief visits to the east wing, and when you see what’s inside, you know you’d have remembered it if you had.

 

 _Magic_. Here’s where it is, locked away in a room deep within the castle. Shelves and shelves of potions and strange-looking ingredients litter one wall, and books are stacked along the wall out of which you’re peering. There’s a long, glass-topped table opposite the door with several books open on it and a bowl of apples at its center, and it’s there that Regina sits, flipping a few pages before she finds what she’s looking for.

 

She closes her eyes and a purple mist begins to form in the center of the room, hovering in place without dissipating as though it’s waiting for her command. Regina opens her eyes. “Show me Emma Swan,” she says, and you squint through your hole, wishing it were a little bigger.

 

The mist parts, and you can see a vague, unformed picture in front of you. You’re looking at it from the side and it’s distorted because of it, but you can still make out the image of Ma riding on a horse beside your Gramps, her brow furrowed in that way that you know she’s complaining right now.

 

You smile at her with affection, missing her more than ever, and you’re surprised to see the same affection- albeit more tempered- on Regina’s face as she studies the image. “Such a _waste_ ,” she mumbles to herself, and the mist evaporates as she turns away.

 

* * *

 

 

You find yourself back there later that night. You don’t have a bedtime here, not really- you’re too old for it and Ma’s gotten worse about enforcing your old bedtime the past couple of years, anyway. But Grams does pointedly wish you a good night when you’re up later than she is and you drag your feet back toward your room, settling in with a book of adventures from the library and wondering how much work it’d be to hook up a TV in the Enchanted Forest.

 

Tonight, though, Regina is still on your mind, and you push your dresser to the side and slip through the secret door behind it, hurrying through openings in the walls until you’re at the east wing. You peer through the rooms that make up her quarters, searching for the sorceress, but there are some rooms you can’t look into that the passageway doesn’t wrap around.

 

Still, though, you’re nothing if not persistent, and you find a patch of stone that seems carved together a little too smoothly, attached more securely than the rest of the wall. A door, you guess. Your fingers dart along the side of the wall until they find a hooked catch and depress it, and the door slides open silently.

 

This is much too dangerous, too close to the sorceress you can never see, but your curiosity is stronger than your common sense right now and you can’t seem to stay away. You creep along the sides of what’s sort of a parlor, an open room with only a slim desk at one end and a couch along the wall where you’ve entered from, peeking into each of the other rooms that the parlor opens into.

 

There’s the magical study, of course, and another small library to the right of it. To the left is a room that looks almost like a modern kitchen- so much so, in fact, that you’re not entirely sure it isn’t exactly that and Regina has been enjoying the comforts of home- and through there, a small hallway that leads to an enormous bedroom.

 

You can see Regina now, lying in the big bed and tossing and turning in her sleep, and you can’t stop yourself from moving forward to the door and watching her as she shifts, murmuring unintelligible words in her sleep. Her hair is out of its coif, her cheeks are flushed and distressed, and she looks so _human_ , so small and normal and unintimidating. You want to come closer.

 

You’re playing with fire, you remind yourself, and when she shifts for a moment and stops moving, you panic, scampering with light feet through the kitchen and back to the parlor, pausing only when you’re back in front of your exit, your heart beating wildly.

 

You’re going to leave now. You have to. Everything depends on your ability to step away right now. But you can’t stop yourself from glancing around one last time and spotting the frame flat against the edge of the desk.

 

It’s…

 

You step closer, disbelieving, and pick it up. It’s impossible. It doesn’t make _sense_ , not even in this world where magic is real and Ma and you are royalty. It’s beyond anything you’d have ever expected to find in these quarters.

 

It’s a wallet-sized print of you at nine or ten, your hair neatly combed and your shirt one you’ve never seen before, smiling at the camera with a school-photograph sky-blue background behind you.

 

You hear a creak of movement from the bedroom and you grab the picture and run, climbing into the passageway and racing back to your room.

 

* * *

 

 

You stare at the photo for what must be hours, picking out every detail of it and thinking them through. Your hair is a little longer than it is now, your clothes aren’t ones you can imagine Ma picking out, not even for school picture day. You smile at the camera like you’re happy, really happy, but you can’t remember many times when you weren’t happy.

 

Still, though, it’s like looking at a photograph of someone else, or of yourself in a dream. Where is it from? You’re certain it’s from the years you can’t remember, the time you’d been in Maine and Grams is so reticent about. Somehow, a single picture of a time that doesn’t exist had escaped whatever wreckage the curse had left behind. How does Regina have it? _Why_?

 

You’re important to Regina and the curse, you know from the photo. Ma, too. You don’t know why and Grams is less than helpful when you ask her about it at the breakfast table. “You were the price of the countercurse,” she says finally, but that’s just the same thing she’s said dozens of times before with new words. She’s never called you a price before, as though someone had had to pay it with you.

 

“Why us?” you persist. “Why _me_?”

 

She hesitates. “I suppose…because of your connection to your mother.” It doesn’t sound like a lie and it makes enough sense that you don’t question it, but there’s something on her face you can’t read, a deception that you can’t grasp just yet.

 

“Because Ma is the savior?” you guess, and Grams chews on her toast for a moment too long.

 

“I-“ She begins, but she’s cut off when a guard bursts into the room, panting for breath.

 

“She’s coming! Right now.” He halts in front of Grams, formal once more. “The evil queen demands that I inform you that she’s on her way here.”

 

Grams’s face tightens. “Henry, you need to leave right now.”

 

“But-“

 

“ _Henry_!” The words are urgent and you clamber to your feet, sensing her panic and finding the closest exit in the walls. Grams sighs at you but doesn’t order you any further away, so you wait in your hiding place, tense and a little excited at the thought of this new evil queen.

 

You shouldn’t be surprised when it’s Regina who sweeps in, her eyes dark and angry and frantic as she addresses Grams. “Someone was in my quarters last night!” she snaps.

 

“Oh.” Grams’s eyes are wide. “Oh, no, Regina, I had no idea. I’ll send out my guards to-“

 

“You’ll do better than that!” She’s breathing heavily, her fingers twitching with magic as she strides closer to Grams, suddenly threatening if not for the wildness in her eyes. She looks…lost, almost, as though something has been taken away from–

 

 _Oh_. You think of the photograph, tucked beneath your pillow, and you bite back the guilt that washes over you at the impotent desolation on Regina’s face.

 

“I want the trespasser executed. I won’t have anyone mucking about in my quarters, _stealing_ from me,” she snarls, and she’s shaking when Grams takes her hands, her eyes seeking out the vulnerability in Regina’s.

 

“I will find them and remove them from the castle,” she says, enunciating each word with care. “We can’t have anyone intruding on your space, especially when your existence should be a secret.” Regina only glares in response, but Grams seems content with whatever she’s seen on the other woman’s face, letting Regina’s hands go. “What did they take from you?”

 

Regina whirls around in response, stalking from the room rather than answering the question, and you squirm in your place, unwilling to face Grams just yet.

 

* * *

 

 

You need to return the photo. It doesn’t seem fair, not when it’s a picture that should be yours, but its importance to Regina eclipses any curiosity you feel about it and she seems so adrift without it. So you wait a day, persuading yourself that you’ll put yourself at too much risk by going while Regina is still so angry, and then you stay up until the early hours of the morning and head out to the east wing of the castle.

 

This time, Regina is asleep on the couch in the parlor, and you bite your lip, guilty again that she feels the need to guard her door now. You think of the way the other royals had spoken about her, of the way the guard had called her the evil queen. She’s surrounded by people who hate her here, and you’ve only made it worse by intruding.

 

You consider leaving the photo on the floor by the wall rather than venturing past Regina to the desk. But that’d be like painting a big red arrow on the wall, signaling _THIS IS HOW I GOT IN_. And you’re not entirely sure that you don’t want to come back, once Regina isn’t so cautious anymore. (You _know_ you’ll be back, because Regina is the most interesting thing about this castle and you want to spend all your time within these walls, a silent observer.)

 

So you sneak past her, careful in your sneakers on the long carpeted floor, and set the photo back in place on the desk, frowning at it one last time. It’s a clue to your locked away memories, but not a very helpful one; not as helpful as one of those convenient potions might be. You can do without it, especially if Regina can’t.

 

You turn to go and your frown grows deeper when your feet don’t move with you. There’s a light purple mist on the floor that you hadn’t seen before, rising up from the carpet to wrap around the soles your feet. _A trap!_ Regina had set it for the intruder, and you’d walked carelessly into it, forgetting the capabilities of the woman sleeping on the couch beside you. And now you’re stuck in magical quicksand that crawls along your shoes, higher and higher until it’s nearly at your socks.

 

You quickly yank your feet free of your sneakers, hopping over the mist and back to the secret door, and it’s barely shut when you hear the abrupt movements just inside the room.

 

You peer back in, unable to resist, and see Regina standing, bleary-eyed and dangerous as she heads over to the desk. She stares at the photo for a moment, tracing your features in the picture, and you tense as you see her remember the trap she’d set.

 

She glances at the floor and freezes.

 

And now she’s gathering up your sneakers and holding them in her arms, shaking harder than she had with Grams yesterday, and there’s no anger in her eyes, no deadly fury or frantic terror, just tears that slide down her cheeks as she sinks back onto the couch and sobs into your sneakers. She whispers your name and you fight the urge to come out now, to demand _who was I to you_ and to run into her arms. Your heart is hurting worse than ever before, and you want to touch her, to comfort her, to understand why a sorceress in your grandmother’s castle is so intimately connected to you.

 

You stay in the wall beside her until you fall asleep, and leave only once morning comes.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have been absolutely blown away by the feedback for this story! I've actually been a little intimidated about posting any more of the fic after that, lol. <3 But thank you all so much and I hope this doesn't disappoint!
> 
> There's some back-and-forth written dialogue in this part. It'll be kept to a minimum for the rest of the fic, but this chapter had to have lots of it. Let me know if it's tough to follow and I'll try to figure out alternatives.

You’re sure Regina’s going to tell Grams who her visitor was and you’ll be in big trouble (You can’t imagine Grams punishing you, not when she’s so gentle, so instead you’re left with the image of an apple on your head as your very pregnant grandmother aims an arrow at it), but there’s no sign of Regina in the rest of the castle for the rest of the day and Grams doesn’t say a word about it. Maybe she’s giving you another chance, now that you’ve returned the picture and she knows you weren’t a malicious spy.

 

Maybe she wants you to come back.

 

You’re clinging to your own curiosity now in favor of the truth, you know that. You shouldn’t go back. This entire world depends on you never meeting the sorceress in the east wing, and you’re playing with fire. But you can’t shake the thoughts of her from your mind, not when there’s something between you both that you can’t remember and when she might be more accessible than before.

 

And you need your sneakers back, right?

 

Her bedroom door is closed when you sneak back down there the next night, sealing her off from you, and you breathe a sigh of relief as you step out of the wall. Your sneakers are sitting on the desk, the laces neatly tucked in and the outer leather shinier than you remember. You almost laugh at the idea of Regina using magic to clean off the scuff marks and the dust. It suits her, you think. Ma would never- _C’mon, Henry, you’ve gotta get the shine out of those shoes before you blind me_ \- but it feels sort of comforting to have someone keep such attention to detail.

 

You take them from their place, hooking the laces over your fingers and swinging them from side to side, and only then do you notice the thick white sheet of paper that had been below them with your name written across the top.

 

You pick it up, your heart thumping against your chest at the careful cursive of your name. It changes things, somehow, knowing that Regina is talking back to you, that she knows that you’re here now and she wants to communicate. The closed door of her bedroom might be your barrier, but you can receive a letter from her without any dire consequences, and you’re not sure why you’re so glad to know that but you smile at the paper nonetheless.

 

The message is curt and to the point, and if you hadn’t seen the way Regina had wept yesterday, you might have misconstrued her reaction here as anger. _You know the risks, Henry. There’s nothing for you here, and coming into my quarters will only invite disaster._ There’s a line underneath it crossed out with savage force, blackening the whole paper, but all you can make out below the markings is _You need to be strong because I can’t_ – and nothing else.

 

There’s a postscript halfway down the page, and you blink down at it, bemused. _And stop scuffing your sneakers. You’re a prince, not a peasant._

 

The fondness at her reproof is overwhelming and unexpected, leaving you grinning like she’d told you that you won the lottery. It feels comfortable, familiar, like coming home after a long day away. It feels like Ma had been, way back when you were little and she’d been much stricter with you than she is now, and it fills you with warmth even when it’s from a stranger.

 

On impulse, you open the shallow drawer in the desk and peer around until you find an old-fashioned pen, and then you’re scrawling questions on the paper before you can stop yourself. **Did you know me in Storybrooke?** **Why was my mother the price for coming here? Were you the queen who cursed everyone into the town when my ma was a baby? How are you gonna fight the Wicked Witch? Is there some other way that I can see you?** On and on you write until your hand is tired and your handwriting has shrunk to fit in the last bits of empty space on the page. **Why don’t you go out into the castle more? Is my ma good at magic? What if we just wrote back and forth like this? How can I tell when my fake memories started?** **Why won’t anyone tell me about what happened in Storybrooke?**

 

You don’t stop until you’re out of room and you’re breathing hard, the weight of a million questions heavy on your mind and across the page. Grams is honest enough about the world around you but she doesn’t talk about _before,_ about the things you can’t remember that everyone else knows. You’re not a little kid anymore, and you’re sure you can handle anything horrible that they’re keeping from you, but instead you’ve gotten only stilted answers that tell you nothing at all.

 

Regina won’t lie to you, you think, reading the stern words in her flowing writing across the top of the page one last time before you slip back into the wall and close the stone door behind you. In this quiet sanctuary where she remains alone, she hasn’t actively tried to keep you away, to seal the walls with spells or lock you out. There’s a part of her that must be okay with you being around, even with the danger contained in each of your interactions.

 

Maybe you’re just fooling yourself, but you can’t bring yourself to care very much.

 

You hear the creak of a door opening from your place in the wall, and Regina moves into your line of sight a few moments later. She’s red-eyed and wary, her head cocked as she listens for noise, and she moves into the parlor only after a long minute of hesitation, heading for the desk. She takes the paper and sinks down onto the couch, reading your response silently, her lips moving to mouth the words as she reads them.

 

You can just barely see her from your angle, and you dart past her door in the hallway to enter the wall on the opposite side of the room and watch her better. Her forehead is buried in one palm, now, fingers massaging her temples as she continues to stare down at the letter, and you long to come out right now and demand to know what she’s thinking.

 

Instead, you watch silently as she squeezes the page in her other hand, hard enough to tear holes through it with her nails, and she rises abruptly and makes her way into the study where she does her magic.

 

* * *

 

The next night there’s a book lying open on the desk. The pages are blank, and you flip through it curiously until you see your name engraved on the cover and the brisk message spreading across the first page as you stare. _You can’t come here anymore, no matter how many questions you have. Take the book, Henry. I want your word._

 

You glance at Regina’s bedroom door- closed again, shutting her off from you- and tuck the book under your arm, settling down in your space behind the wall. **I promise** , you write under her message, chewing on your lip. You don’t want to give her that, but you know instinctively that she’ll settle for nothing less.

 

The words appear beneath your response, letter by letter of elegant penmanship. _That includes the passages behind my quarters_.

 

You scowl at the page and write a question instead. _The_ question. **Did we know each other when I was in Storybrooke?**

 

There’s no response, and you tense, because if this is a battle of wills you’re prepared to fight her with all you’ve got. She can keep you out of her quarters, but you won’t promise to stay away from her, not when seeing her feels more right than anything else in this castle and there’s a little thrill moving through your heart at just this tiny communication.

 

You hunker down onto the cool floor of the passageway and stare at the book in the light seeping in through the door. Regina feels close, closer than she’s ever been, writing you messages in an enchanted book you can’t put down. You won’t let her go now, and you’re nothing but obstinate when determined.

 

You expect silence stretching through the night and another evening spent asleep against a stone wall. Instead you’re surprised to see a flicker of movement in the room beside you as Regina emerges, dressed in pajamas with an identical book in her arms and looking unaccountably tired as she turns to address the wall behind which you’re waiting. “Go to your bed and get some sleep, Henry. We’ll talk in the morning.”

 

She says it gently but firmly, and your body reacts as though it’s been conditioned to listen to her from birth and rises before you can think to protest the order.

 

* * *

 

In the morning, you get the closest thing you’ll ever get to an answer from Regina while you’re sitting at the breakfast table. _We were acquainted, yes. The details of your time in Storybrooke are moot while you still lack your memories and they’ll only confuse you. Patience, Henry._

 

You sigh and shut the book, aware of Grams’s eyes on you. “That must be a good book,” she comments. “You’ve been peeking inside all meal.”

 

You shrug. “It’s okay.” You’re positive that she won’t approve of you talking to Regina even through a book, and so you stare back at your plate while her brow furrows and contemplate a change of topic. “When is Ma coming back?”

 

Grams smiles understandingly. “It shouldn’t be much more time. We’ve received word that the Witch is on the move, her army attacking some of the smaller villages near the border, and your mother’s party is helping with relief efforts there before they come home. Not much more than another week,” she offers.

 

“Oh.” You try not to let your disappointment bleed through, because Grams is really great and she’s trying hard to keep you happy while you’re stuck here waiting for Ma, but you think you might have failed when she reaches over to squeeze your shoulder.

 

“How about we get started on riding today?” she offers. “I was hoping that your grandfather could teach you, but some preliminary bonding with the horses here might help in the meantime.”

 

“Bonding?” you repeat, because that doesn’t sound like riding to you.

 

It isn’t. It’s brushing the horse and feeding him under the watchful gaze of the stable master, talking to the horse and building some form of trust between the two of you. “Talk to him,” Grams encourages you, and the horse nuzzles your hand as though there’s already some familiarity in those big dumb eyes. “Let him get to know you and you might be riding even before everyone gets back.”

 

You nod and smile and wait until she leaves before you settle down on a bale of hay next to your horse’s stall. “You don’t mind if I write a little during our alone time, do you?”

 

The horse tilts his head from side to side, eyes half-closed as he regards you. You pat his snout and open your book again, retrieving the pen you’d slipped into your pocket earlier. **I’m confused now** , you write, rolling your eyes at Regina’s reticence in her earlier message.

The response comes faster than you’d expected, less than a minute later. _I don’t have any answers for you. You’ll have to trust me._

 

 **I don’t even know you.** You sound sulky, immature, and you flush and write some more before she can. **Why don’t you leave your quarters? Is it because I’m here? Do you ever have visitors?**

 

 _I value my privacy,_ she writes simply. _I am no beloved company in any party, and I have little interest in surrounding myself with fools._

You rememberher impatience at the council meeting, her contempt for the people around her, and you can’t help but grin as you retort, **You’re talking to me, though. So I guess I’m not a fool.**

 

 _I should hope not._ A pause, then: _Your mother raised you better than that._

 

“Yeah,” you say aloud, and wonder at the sorrow that washes over you at the acknowledgement.

 

Maybe you just miss Ma.

 

* * *

 

 **I haven’t told anyone about this book** , you write later, when you’re sitting behind the wall of her parlor again.

 

“Good.” She leans back into the couch. “It was a foolish idea, and I was foolish to give it to you.”

 

You narrow your eyes at the page challengingly. **Then why did you?**

 

She quirks her eyebrow where she knows you can see it. “You, Henry, are more tenacious than anyone I’ve ever met. Except perhaps your mother,” she adds, and there’s a secret smile on her face, almost nostalgic. “I’ve long since learned the folly of trying to stop you from…anything, really.”

 

**In Storybrooke?**

 

She shakes her finger warningly in your general direction. “Don’t.”

 

She’s more relaxed today than you’ve ever seen her, not raging or weeping or tense as she toys with the gold engraving on the edges of her book and the sadness in her eyes is held at bay. You think it’d probably be good for her to get out more and see more people, but she laughs when you suggest it.

 

“You don’t know me, Henry.” She says your name often and writes it even more, like it’s as important as a magical spell. It makes you glow a little, to imagine that you matter so much to this stranger who isn’t a stranger at all. “I am far better off isolated from those who loathe me.”

 

**But why? Didn’t you save everyone?**

 

She laughs at that, and the sadness is heavy in her eyes again. “I think I rather doomed them first, dear. I am the villain of this story, don’t doubt that.”

 

And you’ve gleaned enough from what Grams has said and what Regina hasn’t to figure out that, yes, Regina is the queen who’d cursed them all into Storybrooke in the first place, but _still_. She’d saved everyone in the end, had paid some kind of price along with Ma, and now she’s working with Grams and the good guys to fight the Wicked Witch. **You’re not a villain though.**

 

She stares at the page for a moment and then shakes her head, turning away so you can’t see her face. You charge forward. **My grandma likes you. And she would never work with you if you were a bad guy.**

 

Regina reads your response and then laughs again, so hard that there are tears forming at the edges of her eyes. “Oh, Henry, using my relationship with Snow as a benchmark of how evil I am is a poor idea indeed.”

 

* * *

 

She asks you about the past year and you tell her as much as you can remember, feeling as though it’s all kind of unimpressive to a magical queen who lives in a castle. But she keeps following with more questions, more genuine interest, and you oblige as best as you can. She wants to hear about your memories from the two years you know aren’t real, too, and that’s when you realize that she’s the one who must have given you those memories.

 

“I wanted you both to be happy,” she admits the next afternoon. You’d spent the morning in the stables but had gotten bored and found your way into the east wing after lunch instead, and now she’s sitting cross-legged on the couch, her fingers running over the words on the page of the book as they appear. “The price we- _you_ \- paid, the loss of your family…I didn’t want it to consume you after I cast the curse.”

 

It hadn’t, not exactly, you think. It’s easier to remember the simplicity of the years before last, of the decade of good memories you’d had with Ma before Storybrooke and the two years of false memories that had been equally joyful. You’d been safe and loved and never lacked for anything, and you’d never dreamed of another life just beyond your fingertips.

 

Things had changed last year. You’d still been happy- nothing had been different, really, nothing that either of you had been aware of, anyway- but there had been emptiness where before you’d been complete. It had been in moments as simple as sitting down for breakfast and your meal feeling _wrong_ , like the food wasn’t cooked the way you liked it or the table was too small. It had been present when you hadn’t realized, when you’d turned to talk to the person on the next couch and realized it was empty. You remember déjà vu, whispering words along with Ma and both of you frowning at the knowledge that you’d said them before, and you remember lying in bed and yearning, _wanting_ something you could never put your finger on so badly that you’d cry with frustration and desire and helplessness.

 

You tell Regina about it all and when she murmurs very quietly, “And now that you’re here with your family in this world, do you feel complete again?” you look down and notice the wet spots appearing on the text of the book, and only then do you realize that you’ve been crying all this time.

 

You _don’t_ , and that’s the worst part, because finding out the truth about _why_ hasn’t felt like closure at all. There’s still a void within you that Grams and horses and magic can’t fill, still a missing piece in this puzzle that leaves you longing for something you don’t understand, and something is squeezing your chest so hard that you can hardly breathe. You can’t hear what Regina says next over the sound of your own sobs and gasping for breath, and you drop the book, furiously wiping away your tears and struggling to get a hold of yourself.

 

It’s only when your sobbing subsides that you notice how dark it’s gotten in the passageway. Something is blocking the light from shining through the door in the wall, and you blink away your tears and squint out.

 

It’s Regina, leaning against the wall just beside you, and you can’t see her face or her hands but you feel her presence all the same, comforting in its nearness even when she’s further from you than anyone else in the universe. You press your hand against the wall, your tears returning in earnest, and for a moment you don’t feel quite as hollow, quite as empty anymore.

 

You pick up the book and write in the dark, **How can I miss something I don’t even remember?** and then you stumble to your feet, embarrassed, and flee swiftly from the east wing.

 

* * *

 

_When I first cast the curse, its maker warned me that the price would be a hole in my heart that could never be filled. I don’t think I ever succeeded in overcoming that until the curse was broken. I fear that this time, you’ve been suffering the price I was meant to pay as well._

 

You read the words over and over again when you find them written in the book in the morning, the ink darker over the dried tears on the page. They explain nothing at all, least of all the way your own heart reacts to Regina’s presence.

 

You close the book and don’t open it again until nighttime, when you’re alone in the silence of your room and you miss Regina’s voice more than ever.

 

* * *

 

Grams decides that you’ve been bonded sufficiently with your horse and today you’re going to get to ride him for the first time, and you run to the stables right after breakfast with your book tucked under your arm. You write to Regina about it as you wait for the knight who’s supposed to teach you, and in response, you get a full page of stern instructions from her “for your safety.”

 

 **Thanks, _Mom_** , you write back sarcastically, but you’re grinning as you read through them and you don’t even notice when she doesn’t respond. Nothing can ruin your mood today, not when you’re finally going to get to ride on horseback like a real knight and maybe soon you’ll start learning to fight with a sword. You don’t know if Ma plans on staying here after the Wicked Witch is defeated, but you think you might as well shore up your future as a knight just in case.

 

Or…a king, you correct yourself, frowning, because you haven’t thought about _that_ particular aspect of being royalty before. You don’t know how the laws of birthright work here, anyway. You can’t imagine Ma ever wanting to be a queen and if Grams has a baby boy it may be a moot point, but right now you’re directly in line for the throne.

 

You’d better get started on riding soon or you’ll be the laughingstock of the kingdom.

 

Regina’s tips are actually helpful. You don’t accidentally mount the horse backward and you try not to be too impatient and spook the horse, and you aren’t thrown from his back even once. Your teacher- a knight named Bertrand, who’s been assigned to Grams’s personal guard- is duly impressed. “You’re a natural, Highness,” he compliments you at noontime, when you’re riding slowly back toward the stables. “I don’t think you’ll need as much training as you will simple practice. Horsemanship runs in your family.”

 

“Really?” you ask, because you remember Ma saying that she’d rather drive the Bug through a hurricane on a bad day than spend five minutes on a horse.

 

Bertrand’s smile freezes on his face, as though he’s said something he shouldn’t have. “Never mind that, Highness. Hyah!” His horse quickens its pace and you squeeze your knees together against your mount, feeling muscles contract and expand beneath you as your own horse moves to catch up.

 

You’re nearly there when something _changes_ in the wind, when you can suddenly feel a new chill in the air and the sky seems to grow darker and heavier. “Bertrand?” you ask, but he’s looking up, his eyes wide and worried, and you follow his gaze.

 

There are black, menacing-looking birds circling the sky just above you, more and more congregating until the horde of them is thick enough to partially obscure the sun’s rays. They look like crows but they’re bigger, nastier, and you tighten your grip on your horse’s reins and duck your head down protectively.

 

“Get back to the stables,” Bertrand orders, drawing his sword, but the birds are already diving at both of you, pecking at Bertrand as he slices them open and hovering around you as your horse moves even faster.

 

The first one seizes your shirt in its talons and you shout, batting at it, but then there’s another and another and a fourth and fifth, flying around you in a flurry of black feathers, and two more latch onto your shirt and you’re suddenly being lifted into the air by the too-large birds, your heart pounding and your fingers scrabbling at air as they screech around you in triumph and catch your limbs as you struggle.

 

You’re being carried higher as Bertrand shouts threats from the ground and gallops toward the castle, and the horse you’d left behind is getting smaller and smaller when you glimpse it through the moving black shadows that surround you. “Help me!” you shout. “Bertrand! Regina! REGINA!”

 

It’s too late. You’re being dragged through the sky by a dozen birds, stolen away by what must be the Wicked Witch, and there’s no one left to stop them, no one who could possibly save you now. Still, you’re fighting until the end, slapping at the birds whenever you can yank your hands free and crying out for the one person who might still save you. “Regina! Regina!”

 

* * *

 

Then…a whoosh of purple energy around you, silencing the cawing of the crows, and they’re dissolving into nothing but black feathers around you, fluttering toward the ground as the purple smoke seems to guide you downward as well. You squeeze your eyes shut, expecting to pick up the pace and begin to fall anytime soon, but the drop never comes, not while the purple-tinted wind surrounds you and slows your descent. “Regina,” you whisper again, gratefully, because who else could it be?

 

You land on the ground and for a reckless moment, you try to follow the cloud of magic to its source in the shadows of the stable, to see Regina as she sees you, but then you hear Grams’s voice, panicked and breathless. “Keep your head down, Henry. Whatever you do, don’t look up.”

 

You lie flat on the ground and bury your face in soft straw as you hear footsteps moving to stop beside Grams. “You’re being overly reckless, Snow. Have you forgotten that you have a child to look after now?” Regina demands. “You can’t be out here in this state.”

 

Grams snorts. “Yes, Regina, _I’m_ the reckless one. Henry’s right _here_. And you might as well send a beacon out to the Witch letting her know that you’re still alive and kicking.”

 

“Was I supposed to let her crows take him?” Regina snaps. “Face down, Henry!” she adds when you lift your head without thinking. “If you think that I’d put your puerile little kingdom ahead of-“ She stops abruptly, breathing hard.

 

There’s silence for a moment, then a murmur from Grams. “They’re coming back around.”

 

“I’ll have to repel them. You stay here with Henry.” You tilt your head just enough to see black heels march off a few feet ahead of you, and when you peek a little more you can see Regina, dressed in a power suit with her hands outstretched toward the sky, more magic flowing from them and pointed toward the black throng of crows as they swoop down as one.

 

Feathers land all around you, black and ashy grey, and you can hear the angry screeching of the birds again as they hurl themselves toward Regina, clawing at her as she sweeps them away with her magic. There are so many, more than you can count, and no matter how many Regina magics away, it seems like more and more attack with every blow.

 

“It’s too much!” Grams shouts over the noise. “Regina, we need to run!”

 

“Get...to the stables,” Regina growls through gritted teeth. “Leave them to me.”

 

And you’re being herded into stables, dirt-faced and terrified, by your grandmother, but Regina is still surrounded by crows and every attack seems to make them even more aggressive. You’re afraid to talk- is talking directly to Regina enough contact to break the countercurse?- but you squeeze Grams’s elbow once you’re safe in the shadows, your eyes conveying all your worries for the sorceress.

 

“She’s going to be fine,” Grams says, but there’s a tremor in her voice and she looks more afraid than she ever has before. “She’s stronger than you know.”

 

A crow manages to get past Regina’s defenses and claws at her neck and she whirls around, eyes flashing, and flings it at the wall of the barn. You duck behind Grams, glad that her stomach is protruding enough to hide you, and nearly trip over something gleaming on the floor.

 

It’s your book. You wrap dirty arms around it, longing for whatever false comfort it can give you while its maker is fighting off an unending threat and your frustration at your own helplessness is mounting.

 

And then there’s a flash of brown and gold as another horse comes racing past you, coming to a sharp halt just behind Regina; and the armored rider yanks off her helmet and climbs off the horse, standing unsteadily beside her. “You seem kind of busy. I hope you don’t mind me interrupting,” she says breathlessly, and your face splits into a wide grin as you tighten your grip on the book.

 

“It’s been a while, Miss Swan,” you can hear Regina respond over the crows. Her tone is contemptuous, but it’s a different kind of contempt than you’ve seen her address Grams’s council with, and you can hear the relief in her voice muting the harshness. “And you’re woefully untrained.”

 

Ma shakes her head and you can picture her rolling her eyes at Regina. “This can’t be harder than a lunar eclipse, right?” And then she’s lifting one arm, palm outstretched, and you’d be fascinated by the blue stream of energy that fires from her palm at the crows if your eyes weren’t glued to her other hand and the fingers that curl around Regina’s forearm.

 

Somehow, their magic together seems to be enough to ward off the crows, and now there are more feathers falling than birds diving and the sun is shining down on the fields again, illuminating your ma and Regina in the sea of black as they still stand, hands raised to the sky as columns of blue and purple magic still pour out and join into a steady stream of magic focused at their attackers.

 

Gradually, the birds begin to peel off from the flock and fly away, having decided that attacking two sorceresses is more than they can pull off, and when the sky is finally clear again, you can see both women sag against each other in relief.

 

And then Regina whispers something into Ma’s ear and vanishes in a cloud of purple smoke and Ma spins around and runs to you unsteadily, her eyes bright even though her face is lined with exhaustion, and you’re enfolded in her arms in an instant. “I missed you, kid,” she says, and you let go of your book with one arm so you can hug her back.

 

“Me too,” you say, and you spare one glance up to the tower of the east wing before you bury your face in her shoulder.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know I said this would only be four chapters at most, but this one got away from me and I had to split it in half. The good news is that the next chapter's also all done, so I'll post it as soon as I've made some progress on the final chapter and I can get both to y'all asap. Much thanks as always for all your commentary- you're all so insightful and there's so much that you ask that makes me rethink and fine-tune what I'm planning on writing! The best fandom and the best readers~ <3

Grams insists on a big, formal meal in the main dining hall, not the little room where you eat together, as a welcome back to Ma and Gramps and the rest of their party. You keep your book on your lap and Gramps sits next to you and tells you about the ogres they’d fought off in one of the distant towns.

 

Ma sits across from you and kicks you playfully under the table whenever you demand more gory detail. “But if you cut off the head…where did it _go_?”

 

Gramps laughs, mussing your hair a little, and it’s kind of great to have another guy in the family. Magic is great and swords are cool, but you’re pretty sure that the grossness factor of a world with demons is way better than anything else this realm has to offer, and from the expression on Ma’s face, it’s been sorely wasted on her. “It squashed against the side of the mountain and went all…flat and squishy in every direction. Two of the men actually vomited right there.”

 

“Did Ma?” You counter her kick and narrow your eyes at her in challenge.

 

She waggles her shoulders from side to side, swaggering in place. “No, _Ma_ stuck a sword in the other ogre and then made her graceful departure from the ogre goo.”

 

You’re almost impressed before Gramps nods his head solemnly. “It was quite the attack on his knee. Nearly incapacitated him for at least a few seconds.”

 

Ma glares at him with exaggerated betrayal and you laugh at them both and the energy they’ve brought back to this quiet castle. Gramps might be a virtual stranger to you, but he treats you like you’re family and you can start to think of this place as _home_ now, or the very beginnings of one. Grams is watching both of them fondly and Grumpy the dwarf is chiming in now with his own story and Ma is grinning at you in between scowls and this room feels like it’s almost complete, almost right for you both.

 

Almost.

 

You fake an enormous yawn and ask to go upstairs early, and Grams and Ma both eye you like they know you’re lying but Grams still says, “Yes, of course, you must be exhausted from your ordeal,” and you duck around the table to give Ma a quick hug and then run half the way to the east wing.

 

* * *

 

 **Are you okay?** you write after watching Regina silently for a few minutes. She’s absorbed in the book she’s writing at her table in the magical study, a nasty scratch across the nape of her neck that you can see from your position in the wall. Her matching book is open beside her, but she doesn’t spare it a glance, engrossed as she is in her spell book.

 

She jumps as your writing appears on the page beside her, her eyes flashing purple for a moment as she tracks down your hiding spot. “Henry! You shouldn’t be wandering around alone with the Witch and her spies in this neighborhood.” She frowns, reproving.

 

But you’re with _her_ , the strongest person in the castle. You remember how she’d implied earlier that she would put you before the price you’re paying if you were in danger, and your heart warms in your chest at the idea of it.

 

She shakes her head, weary, when you point that out. “Don’t take advantage, Henry. You’re too intelligent to let selfishness win out over caution.”

 

You rear back, stung. You’re not _selfish_. You just like…knowing things, knowing Regina, and not letting the situation win out over your natural curiosity. Your teachers call it inquisitive. Ma calls it being a little shit when you do it to her (and you have to remind her that you’re _thirteen_ and she should really watch her language around you), but she’s just as gleeful to acknowledge that you get it from her. It’s not selfishness. **I don’t even know what this price means** , you write crankily. **I was right behind you today and nothing happened.**

 

Regina frowns, closing her book and turning her chair so she’s facing your general direction. “It seems that mutual contact- any kind of mutual contact- would be enough to undo whatever we’ve done here. I can talk to you as long as you’re not talking back or visible or touching me. Conversely, I can observe you riding a horse from my window as long as you don’t see me watching.” She smiles a secret smile and your irritation ebbs a tiny bit at this new information. “You’re better than I was my first time on a horse.”

 

**Really?**

 

She quirks an eyebrow. “Of course, I was considerably more skilled than you by the time I made it to your age.”

 

You grin at the wall, challenge noted and accepted. **I’ll get better. Way better than you.**

 

“I don’t doubt it-“ She pauses, frowning. “Henry, are you banging on the wall?”

 

You aren’t, but you can hear that sound, too, a low rapping against stone somewhere nearby. It almost sounds like someone’s knocking, but that’s impossible. No one comes to visit Regina. No one would dare invade her quarters.

 

You creep along the side of the wall as she cautiously steps out into the parlor, her clothing shifting from Storybrooke to Evil Queen in a whoosh of purple smoke. She sweeps her hand to the side and the door to her quarters open, revealing your mom standing in the doorway, shifting from side to side awkwardly.

 

“Holy sh-“ she says, her eyes widening when she sees Regina. “I mean, wow. I mean. That looks uncomfortable.” You notice that her eyes aren’t on Regina’s face, but dipping somewhere below her neck at the expanse of skin there, and you wince with secondhand embarrassment. _Seriously, Ma?_

 

Regina glances once toward you and then sharply back at Ma. “It seems rather more uncomfortable for you than me,” she says curtly.

 

Ma looks up, and you can see that she’s blushing and this is _so_ much more than you want to think about her or Regina and you might have left if not for the fact that the only exit from this passageway is into the hallway where Ma still stands. “I just…wanted to see how you’ve been. Since…you know. I didn’t get to see you before David hauled me off to fight ogres and spy on the Wicked Witch of the West.” She presses fingers to her forehead. “What’s next, a rescue mission for Winnie-the-Pooh?”

 

“Winnie-the-Pooh is perfectly capable of taking care of himself.” You can’t tell if Regina is serious or not until her eyes dance toward where you’re hiding and there’s a glimmer of humor beneath the discomfort in her eyes. You smile in the darkness, unseen.

 

Ma has a hand on her hip, and she’s staring from Regina to your hiding place, her brow furrowed in puzzlement. “Look…Regina…I wanted to-“ She stops, waits until Regina meets her eyes. “I wanted to make sure that you were okay after last year. After…”

 

“I’ve been fine!” Regina cuts her off, and she doesn’t look back at you. “It’s an absolute dream here. My happy ending has always been living as a hermit in Snow White’s domain, haven’t you heard?” She laughs, bitter and a little too desperate as her eyes move back to you again. “How do you think it’s been, Miss Swan?”

 

Ma’s jaw is suddenly clenched like it gets when someone looks at you the wrong way or when she’s about to punch something, and you tense, clutching onto your book and waiting for the fireworks to start. Instead, she curls her fingers into her palms and says, “Okay. You’re clearly still the same old Regina, and I’m just gonna-“ She nods twice and turns around, stepping away from the doorway.

 

You’re disappointed. You’d thought Regina had liked Ma, that they were going to learn magic together, that it’d be more friendly than this strained atmosphere. Instead Ma is walking away and Regina is leaning against the door after she closes it, the back of her head flat against the stone as her eyes fall closed with exasperation.

 

It’s your fault, you’re sure. You’ve put Regina on edge, and now Ma is going to be cranky and they won’t be nearly the superteam that everyone’s been counting on. There must be some way to make it right without getting yourself and Regina into trouble. There must be…

 

“Emma, wait.” You blink and press an eye against the closest gap in the stone, startled. Regina’s door is open again, and the woman in question is standing in the doorway, silent after that first utterance of your mom’s name.

 

And then Ma comes back into view, too quickly for her to have gone too far, and she doesn’t say anything at all, either, no snide remarks or demand for an apology. She walks past Regina into the room, her lips quirked upward in a smile, and she doesn’t stop until she’s gazing at your photo on the desk opposite the front door. “I thought you’d want to know how Henry’s been,” she says, lifting the picture to inspect it. You can see Regina’s eyes tighten as Ma touches it, and Ma must see it too because she lays it back down immediately. “The gift you gave us…the cursed memories…I never thanked you for it all. I wanted to tell you what I could.” Her eyes are soft, like they were when she first saw Grams again, and you feel like you’re intruding on something beyond you.

 

“I…Thank you,” Regina murmurs, moving to stand behind Ma. They’re both looking at your picture now, Regina contemplative and Ma almost guilty, and you have to stop your breathing so you can hear their voices. “This isn’t a safe place to discuss him, though,” Regina adds, and you frown, because the Witch wouldn’t be dumb enough to start up with Regina in her own quarters, right? And why would the Wicked Witch care about your life, anyway?

 

“The walls have ears here,” Regina clarifies, and your eyes narrow. _Oh_. Regina isn’t talking about some evil enemy right now. This is about keeping the truth from you all over again and roping your mother into it. Regina casts a warning glance directly toward your wall, and you shrink back at the warning in her eyes even as a rebellious part of you glares right back at her. You’re so tired of secrets that only you don’t know. You don’t want Ma to keep up more of the same, and a hot flash of jealousy runs through you at the shared knowledge in Ma’s gaze when she turns back to Regina.

 

You make your way along the wall until you find the catch that opens a door out in the hallway. Fine. If they won’t talk in front of you and they won’t tell you what you deserve to know- what you’ve _lived_ and what Regina says will only complicate things without your memories- you’re not going to hang around and make things even more awkward for Regina. You have better things to do, anyway.

 

(No, you don’t.) You sigh, your feet leading you back to your room, and as you climb into bed, you can’t help remembering that while Regina and Grams have called your separation from this land a price you’ve paid, Ma is the only one to refer to it as a _gift_.

 

* * *

 

You stay away for over a day before you’re back in the wall again, resigned to dancing the same path around and around your memories. You’ve never felt so limited before as you do in this fairytale land where dreams are supposed to come true, so isolated from the truth and your own history and the woman you spend most of your time with. But if you keep away from Regina, nothing’s going to change. You still won’t know what you’re missing and you still won’t be able to see her, and you’d rather piece together what little bits you have of the puzzle than sulk far away from the sorceress.

 

 **Were you my fairy godmother?** It’s your newest guess as to what you’d missed from Storybrooke, a guardian angel who watched over you and maybe Ma, too. You think Regina would have been good at it, a fierce protector who’d make sure you were never in danger and who’d probably order you around until you were both resentful and grateful for it. It suits her, and it would explain why you had to let go of each other for her to cast the countercurse.

 

Regina chokes on her glass of cider and you squint out at her, suspicious. “ _Fairy godmother?_ One of those insipid little wasps who frolic in meadows and make promises to good little girls and boys?” She takes a long sip of her drink. “No, I most certainly was not.”

 

You think of the Blue Fairy for a minute, who flutters around in a poofy little outfit and wand and had talked down every single one of Ma’s suggestions this morning at the war council. She’d scowled and speculated that Ma training with an evil sorceress meant that she’d eventually fall prey to dark forces, and Gramps had had to grab Ma’s wrist before she swatted the fairy out of her face. **Maleficent was an evil fairy in Sleeping Beauty,** you point out. **Wasn’t she a fairy godmother?**

 

“That’s something else entirely.”

 

 **Do you know Maleficent?** Aurora is real, living in another castle not too far away, and maybe the villains all stick together in this reality just like the princesses do. **Is she here?**

 

Regina smirks. “She was an old friend. Your mother slayed her a few years back.”

 

 **What did she do?** She doesn’t sound all that upset about losing her friend, even though you know that Regina used to be the one who Ma and Grams had had to fight and they hadn’t been allies for long before the second curse.

 

“Your mother? She was trying to save your life.”

 

There’s that old fondness in her voice again when she recalls your mom, even after the encounter you’d witnessed the day before. You know Ma had gone to meet with her today because Gramps had invited her to ride with the two of you and she’d said that she had to go see “the crazy lady with the dresses that are not appropriate for thirteen-year-old boys’ eyes,” and you’d feigned confusion when Gramps had laughed and told her to be careful. So they must have worked things out last night after you’d left.

 

You think Regina might like to hear about the Blue Fairy and Ma, so you tell her about what happened and watch the evil smirk that spreads across her face. And when you peer at her a little more carefully, you can see the startled gratification in her eyes. “That’s…Emma,” she says finally, and her lips curve up into something entirely less malicious.

 

Yeah. That’s your mom.

 

* * *

 

You wake up the next morning with a new theory. **If my ma has magic but Grams and Gramps don’t, then where did it come from? How did you get magic? Could I have it too if Ma does?** Maybe Regina was your teacher and Ma’s, and a magical mishap had been the reason why you three had been left to pay this price. Maybe Regina and your family are trying to spare you some guilt by refusing to tell you anything about Storybrooke.

 

You sit up in bed, book open as you wait to hear back from Regina, and you let your imagination run wild, bringing together the threads of the story as you know it. **Did I summon the Wicked Witch accidentally and you had to send me away to protect me? Are you and Ma worried that I can’t handle the truth? I can, you know. I’m not so sheltered. I’ve seen you in your dresses and everything.** You shudder at the thought of them, because there’s something so innately _wrong_ about seeing Regina displayed like that, all tight leather and harsh makeup and cleavage. It’s not like seeing a comic superhero or one of the women in those magazines that Jeremy had smuggled into school last month. Regina’s older than your _Ma_ , and she exists in your life as something entirely different than those women.

 

There’s no response, and you make a face at the page after a few minutes and get dressed, peeking at the book as you slide on your shoes and head down to breakfast. Regina’s never taken more than a few minutes to answer you before, and you can’t imagine her sleeping late, even if she doesn’t have anything else to do. It seems undisciplined, unlike her, and you’re so worried at breakfast that you don’t notice Ma’s not there until Gramps asks after her.

 

“She said she was getting an early start today,” Grams says, and suspicion rises within you, dark and irritated. You open the book again, see no response, and slam it shut.

 

“I’m done,” you say quickly, shoving your chair away from the table and standing. “I’m going out to the lake.”

 

You take the stairs to the east wing two at a time, jealousy burning hot within you. Regina is _yours_ , and maybe that sounds silly but you hadn’t expected Ma to get in the way of your sparing communications. It isn’t fair. Ma can see her anytime, can practice magic with her and talk to her and all you’ve got is a book that she’s apparently abandoned now that she has real company.

 

How come Ma can see her, anyway? Isn’t she a part of this idiotic price, too? You want to throw open the door right now and demand that Ma come out and explain herself, that Regina write back to you right now and figure out if the price really matters at all, but then you hear harried voices and slip into the passage in the right side of the wall instead, following them to Regina’s study.

 

Ma is sitting crosslegged at the table, staring at the wall in front of her, and Regina stands behind her, one hand on each of Ma’s shoulders as she follows her gaze. Her book is closed on the table beside Ma, and you wonder how long they’ve been positioned like that, without any care for the rest of the world or, well, _you_.

 

“You’re still moving the light, not the shadows,” Regina is hissing in Ma’s ear. “Shifting the light is child’s play. Keeping it steady and manipulating the shadows is-“

 

“You’ve _said_.” It’s not without a whine, and you almost grin at the irritation on Regina’s face. Good. If Ma is going to steal away Regina’s time from you, then at least it’s Ma at her worst that Regina has to deal with. “It’s kind of hard to focus with you standing over me, okay?”

 

“Yes, of course!” Regina bites out. “And we’ll just ask that damnable Witch to give you a few minutes so you can gather your magic when she attacks. That ought to go over well.”

 

Ma rolls her eyes heavenward. “You are _such_ a- Fine.” She rolls her neck muscles, leaning back into Regina’s grip on her. “Give me another minute.”

 

“ _Focus_ ,” Regina says. “Separate between the light and the dark in your mind. It’s the dark you’re trying to touch now, to shape into something new. Feel the dark. Taste its magic in your throat and _breathe_ it out.”

 

You see a shadow flare wildly against the bookcase and then die down again as Ma squeezes her eyes shut. Regina allows herself a tight nod at the attempt. “Stop jabbing. This isn’t a sword or a bullet. You need to learn to sustain your brand of magic for more than a few seconds if you’re going to use it properly.”

 

Ma grunts her acceptance, and Regina strokes a thumb against the back of her neck in a slow circle. “Build it up slowly,” she whispers, and you see Ma shiver in response, her eyes still closed and her head tilted slightly back as though to give Regina better access to her neck.

 

A shadow shifts from its triangular position against the bookcase and expands in stilted bursts, reaching outward to cover the area next to the door before it detaches completely to form a round, dark mark against the wall. Ma inhales so loudly that you can hear it from where you’re pressed against the side of your passageway and the shadow twists and moves until it takes a new shape, like a boy crouched over with something rectangular in his hand. You cock your head to the side and watch as the boy-shadow does, too.

 

“Oh,” Regina says softly, her hands dropping from Ma’s shoulders, and you feel instantly bad. Ma’s visualizing you in the shadows, and you swallow your envy and replace it with guilt for the moment. Her whole life is about you- has always been about you, even when she’s running off on missions with fairytale princes- and you’re too busy clinging to your bond with Regina to think to share her for even this one morning. Regina is staring at the shadow too, looking very sad, and your heart twists in your chest in reaction.

 

Ma opens her eyes, and you don’t understand the shame that shines in her eyes as she sees what she’s done. “I’m sorry,” she murmurs. “I was trying to channel my emotions to control it, and he just…” She breaks off helplessly, letting your shadow fade away. “You shouldn’t have to see him like this. It’s not right.”

 

No, it isn’t, you think silently, tightening your grip on your book and trying not to be resentful at the way that Regina can reach out so easily to ghost her fingers against Ma’s shoulder again. She pulls back before her hand touches Ma, and Ma keeps staring at the wall, oblivious. “Rightness is irrelevant,” she says, and you can tell that she’s trying to keep her voice hard before it wavers. “All that matters is Henry’s happiness.”

 

You’re not happy, and you don’t want to watch anymore of this, Ma and Regina getting to talk like this when you’ve been lucky to get to feel Regina’s presence against the wall when you cry. They might be talking about you but you can’t help but feel like you’re being cheated all the same, because they might both care about you but you’re the one in the walls, missing memories of someone whom you can only trust your senses to believe that she’s important to you. You’re the one who’s separated forever from Regina and who can’t even spend your days with your mom because she’s too busy talking about you to Regina, and you’re the one who doesn’t have this magic that unites them.

 

You cross out your theory from your book with a thin line across it and write instead, **I wish Ma would learn magic from the Blue Fairy instead of you.** **Aren’t you worried that you’re going to teach her bad stuff?**

 

You’re immediately ashamed with your blatant attempt at manipulation and scrawl over the words with a heavy scribble so Regina won’t be able to read them at all whenever she finally remembers that you exist.

 

* * *

 

“Today is all yours,” Ma promises a few days later when she takes you out into the woods outside the castle for some hiking. You bring your book along anyway because if Ma’s not there, that means Regina is going to be more available than she’s been in days and you won’t skip the opportunity to spend time with either of them. “No magic today, no reconnaissance, just you and me.”

 

You shrug, trying and failing to conceal your excitement. “It’s okay if you want to go learn more or whatever. You probably need lots of work.”

 

She pokes you. “I’ll have you know that Regina has called me a pathetic waste of ability at least twice. You hear that? _Ability_.” She beams proudly, and you hide a smile, because she sounds like she’s putting herself down but you’ve heard Regina say that so playfully that it isn’t an insult at all.

 

“What’s it like?” you ask curiously. You’ve seen it from behind the wall, but you’ve never really heard Ma talk about her training. You’d been there when she’d told Grams that Regina is demanding and unpleasant and superior and “all the usual Regina things, but more handsy,” but Grams had only shaken her head and told Ma not to break anything too valuable. And you know that Ma has been practicing at night to impress Regina because Grams had told Gramps that and they’d both rolled their eyes. But you haven’t heard from Ma on your own, and you’re much more interested in that than anything else you might overhear. “Learning from Reg- from the sorceress,” you cover quickly, blushing a little.

 

Ma gives you a sidelong glance but doesn’t comment on your slip. “It’s work,” she says, pushing aside a low branch and holding it for you to climb past. “I’m learning a lot about how to control the magic inside me, and what I can do with it. And Regina’s a taskmaster.” She makes a face. “She might have some not-so-deep-seated issues with me that are coming out now. Yesterday she told me that I needed to work on my endurance, and-”

 

“I saw you,” you interrupt, smirking. Everyone had seen Ma, running circles around the castle for hours with a glass bottle balanced on top of her head. You’d been writing to Regina during Ma’s marathon and seen her laughing at Ma from the window. “I bet it helped a lot.”

 

“Oh, sure, take her side!” Ma mock-scowls. “I spent the entire night floating in midair in the middle of Regina’s living room because she decided that the bottle was _slightly_ off-center when I finished my hundred laps. And she still won’t teach me to conjure up a decent cup of coffee. I’ve been to some pretty crappy schools but this one takes the cake, trust me.”

 

You gaze at her for a minute, at the flush in her cheeks and the sparkle in her eyes when she complains. “You’re really having fun, aren’t you?”

 

Ma’s lips part in protest, then close again. “Yeah,” she admits. “I’m actually getting kind of good at all this magic junk. And Regina’s a hardass but when your other magical option is the Blue Fairy, you learn to appreciate the lady.” She falls back and you take the lead, grabbing onto a rocky crag and hauling yourself up onto it.

 

“You said that she has issues with you,” you prod, because if nothing else, Ma and Regina are your closest link to understanding everything else that’s happened. “Because you broke her curse in Storybrooke?”

 

Ma gives you a look that tells you that she knows exactly what you’re doing. “You know we’re not supposed to talk about Storybrooke without your memories, kid.”

 

“Because it’ll _confuse_ me?” You frown, hating the argument more and more each time you hear it. “I’m not stupid, Ma. We’re in a fairytale land fighting a witch and you’re learning magic. I think I can handle the truth.”

 

“It’s not like that.”

 

“Isn’t it?” You focus your attention on climbing ahead of Ma, refusing to meet her eyes. It’s bad enough not having your memories, but you despise not knowing the truth that everyone around you has kept a hold on. You’ve always trusted Ma, and now you can feel that trust wavering, mingling with resentment at the price she doesn’t have to pay and the distance you’re being kept at by both her and Regina.

 

You can hear her pulling herself up behind you, reaching the top of the crag at the same time as you before she stretches out on the ground, tilting her face up to the sun. “Regina gave us a gift,” she says finally. “I know you don’t see it like that, but we were going to lose our memories anyway when Storybrooke was destroyed. She rewrote them to make sure we’d be happy.”

 

It’s a peace offering, and you accept it. “Okay.”

 

Ma closes her eyes. “We’d done…a lot of crappy things on both sides. Her more than me, of course. Your grandmother filled you in on the original curse, right?” You nod. “And she’s been pretty shaky about which side she’s been on since. But…I dunno, I feel like we broke even after the gift she gave us. I can’t really resent her anymore.”

 

“But you think she resents you?”

 

“I think she’s been in pain for the past year while I’ve been happy, and I think she probably looks at me and sees that every time I’m around her.” Ma licks her lips uncomfortably, and her eyes are sad when she turns to look at you. “I don’t want to rub that in her face, y’know? Not when she’s given up so much to make sure that we had that happiness.”

 

You ponder her words, thinking back to the way Regina looks at your mother. “I don’t think she resents you,” you mumble, because there’s no disguising the fondness that Regina seems to feel for Ma. Maybe there’s a sadistic delight in the way she trains her, maybe it’s just about not being alone (she’s _not_ alone, not when you’re still in the walls, and Regina must like Ma enough to spend so much time with her instead of you). But you don’t think so. It wouldn’t make you so bitter if it were.

 

Ma smiles at you, reaching out to squeeze your knee. “Why don’t you take a few minutes and write in your journal while I work on something?” she murmurs, and you’re confused until she says, “Come on, I saw you slip it into your pack. Who am I to keep you from doing something educational on this medieval vacation?”

 

 _Oh_. You retrieve the book, wishing you’d thought of that explanation for it before, and open it, careful to keep the pages out of Ma’s view as you write about your day to Regina. Ma is staring up at the trees bending above you, and you don’t even realize that she’s doing magic until a trail of leaves tickle you under your chin. “Hey!”

 

“Hey, Pocahontas.” She laughs at you and Regina writes very specific questions about the path of the leaves and dust that Ma’s manipulating and you write back and maybe this is how it should be, sunshine and magic and Ma and Regina and you all together and happy.

 

You try to imagine Regina in one of her corporate outfits and heels, striding through the woods like she owns them, and there’s a lump in your throat at the knowledge that it’s something you’ll never see.


	4. Chapter 4

“He hasn’t changed a bit,” Ma is telling Regina when you slip in after a riding lesson the next day. “He’s still that stubborn kid who’d been impossible to avoid and who managed to get into everything.”

 

Regina nods over her coffee. There’s an armchair in the parlor now, one she’s perched in across the room from Ma, who’s draped over the couch with an empty mug balanced on her stomach. “I don’t doubt it. Henry has always been indomitable when he sets his mind to something.”

 

She doesn’t say anything about your books or your visits, and you squeeze your book tighter, feeling as though, for all their bonding and time together, there’s still something that just Regina and you have to yourselves. **I made my horse jump four hurdles today,** you write in your book, even though Regina’s is closed beside her. You can wait.

 

“He asks about you,” Ma says suddenly, and you can see the way that Regina’s fingers tighten around her knees. “Even without his memories, he still–“

 

Regina cuts her off, her fingers turning white from the pressure she’s exerting with them. “How’s that conjuring going?”

 

Ma takes the cue, frowning to herself. “Um. I made…water? Kind of?” she dips her finger into her mug, wrinkling her nose when something light brown and goopy comes out with it. “You know, this would be a hell of a lot easier if I had some caffeine in my system to start with,” she hints, wiggling her eyebrows at Regina pleadingly.

 

Regina takes a long sip from her mug, unmoved. “I’m sure it would.”

 

“I hate you,” Ma says sulkily, and you snicker very quietly at her face. Ma’s always been overly dependent on her morning coffee, and she’d nearly cried that first day at breakfast when Grams had offered her a draught of something else entirely to drink. Regina’s kitchen must be taunting her with just its existence.

 

“You’re here to practice your magic, not to get treats for lying about uselessly,” Regina says primly, crossing one leg over the other.

 

“I’m practicing! We’re…talking magical theory, right?” Ma offers, hopeful. “I want to use my magic without having to use darkness to motivate it. It worked yesterday in the woods.”

 

“So it did.”

 

“Gold once told me that I needed to focus on who I wanted to protect to bring my magic forth.” Ma sets her mug down on the ground. “It’s about all my emotions, not just anger.”

 

Regina nods. “I suppose. Rumple taught _me_ to channel my rage into power. But I’m not the role model you’re looking for,” she adds wryly. “I had enough anger within me to destroy kingdoms. I would hope you’re not quite there yet.”

 

“Only around you, Your Majesty,” Ma teases, and you’re surprised to see Regina smirk in response. The other people in the palace refer to her as queen only in hushed tones and with barely concealed fear, and Grams frowns upon anyone who she hears do it, but Regina doesn’t seem all that sensitive about it when it’s Ma who’s calling her names.

 

And Ma thinks Regina _resents_ her. You scoff, unseen in the shadows.

 

“Anyway, wasn’t Rumple just trying to corrupt you so you’d cast the curse and he could find his son?” Ma points out.

 

Regina lifts an eyebrow. “A fair point. Though he was right.” She sips at her drink, and you almost laugh at the way Ma’s eyes latch onto the movement of Regina’s throat as she swallows. Someone’s _really_ desperate for coffee. “My magic worked best because I was angry. I don’t think I ever truly found another motivator for it until…” She stares at your place in the wall for a moment before she changes the topic abruptly. “Where is Rumple’s son these days, anyway? I’d have thought he’d be hovering somewhere around you and Henry.”

 

“Oh.” Ma snickers. “David took one look at the way that Hook and Neal were staring at me when Henry and I got here and sent them on another mission on the Jolly Roger somewhere in the next realm over. I’m not sure if he was being all protective dad about it or if he was just trying to give me a break from those two, but either way, it’s been a relief.”

 

“Indeed,” Regina agrees, and she’s smiling for a moment, unguarded in her delight. “Your father is, on rare occasion, not quite the idiot he looks like.”

 

Ma sits up. “I’m so telling him you said that,” she says, her eyes dancing with amusement. “Though apparently you’re buddies with Mary Margaret these days so nothing would surprise me anymore.”

 

“I am _not_.”

 

Ma’s teasing her like she does you sometimes when you’re taking yourself too seriously, playful and unfazed by the way Regina’s eyes are narrowing at her. “That’s not what Ruby says.”

 

“Snow and I,” Regina bites out, “Have become allies only out of necessity. In case you haven’t noticed, your mother is entirely useless- and what, am I supposed to count on _Charming_ to look after her?”

 

Ma presses her lips together with barely contained hilarity. “You really do care.”

 

“I care about how much whining I’d have to endure if you and Henry had ever discovered that your precious Snow White was dead because I didn’t keep an eye on her.” Regina folds her arms on top of her legs, glaring out at Ma.

 

“Wow,” Ma says, shaking her head.

 

“What now?”

 

Ma’s smirking at Regina like she’s about to say something very stupid, and you brace yourself for the worst, unable to keep your own smile off your face at her contagious glee at Regina’s distress. “Just I hope you don’t get really boring now that you’re a hero-type.”

 

“Get out of my quarters,” Regina orders, her face thunderous.

 

Ma clambers to her feet, still unafraid of the formerly evil queen and very powerful sorceress sitting opposite her. “Coffee?” she pleads one last time, her lips still curled into a grin.

 

Regina presses a thumb to her lips and suddenly a shower of brown liquid cascades down Ma’s blonde curls, soaking her face and her clothes as she shrieks. “ _Regina!_ ” You’re worried for a minute that the beverage might be boiling hot but there’s no pain in her cry, just surprise, and Ma hops around in a circle for a moment before she flees the parlor, sucking on the coffee still wet on her fingers.

 

Regina dries the carpet with a wave of her hand, and if she’s smiling with anything more than satisfaction, she barely lets you see it. “Your mother is a child,” she informs you, and now that’s _definitely_ the hint of a non-malicious smile as she picks up Ma’s cup from the floor.

 

 **Yeah, she is** , you’re quick to respond, and then you feel guilty for your condemnation even if Regina’s smile is growing more genuine the more you watch her. **But we take good care of each other,** you add hastily.

 

There’s something soft and sad in the way Regina stares at the page where your writing appears, and your heart beats faster and faster in response. “I’m glad you do,” she says, and there’s nothing but raw honesty in her eyes.

 

* * *

 

You’re awakened early one morning by vigorous shaking, and when you open your eyes, Ma’s face is hovering over your own, so close that you try to blink it away groggily. “Wha?”

 

She takes a step back, extending a hand so you can take it and pull yourself to a sitting position. “Your grandmother’s having the baby right now. I thought you’d want to be there.” There’s something odd in her eyes when she says it, something you can’t entirely figure out, but you don’t think to ask about it.

 

“Wait, seriously?” You’re suddenly wide awake. “Right now?”

 

You hear a distant voice echoing through the halls into your open door. “ _I want an epidural!_ ” It doesn’t sound like your kindhearted, sweet grandmother at all, and you stifle a laugh at the way Ma’s eyes round.

 

“I am never having children in this realm,” she announces, wrapping an arm around you. It’s a little too tight, and you pull away, struggling to climb off the bed. “At least they give you modern medical treatment in prison. You wanna come downstairs and wait with me?”

 

“How much longer will it be?” you ask, trepidation at facing Grams right now warring with excitement at the idea of seeing the new baby.

 

“Not much.” Ma shrugs, not quite meeting your eye. “I thought you might want to keep me company outside the room.”

 

“Outside it!” you confirm, bobbing your head in agreement. “Yeah, okay.”

 

You dress quickly and walk with Ma through the hall into the royal quarters, her hand tight on yours as you find a seat opposite a few of the dwarves and Ruby and Granny. Granny offers you a smile and Ma a sharp look that she doesn’t respond too, just wraps her arm around your back and lays her head against yours. She’s more touchy-feely than usual and it confuses you, but you don’t pull away. “Excited to be a nephew?” she murmurs to you, offering a smile that doesn’t reach her eyes.

 

“Excited to be a sister?” you retort, drumming your feet against the carpeted floor.

 

Ma smiles again, an excruciating stretching of her lips across her face. “Of course I am.”

 

It doesn’t take long before Doc emerges from the bedroom, his little face bright with exhaustion. “It’s a boy!” he announces, and the room breaks out in cheers. He nods to you and Ma. “Go on in, family only.”

 

“Who gets to rule next if he’s a boy?” you ask Ma, remembering your confusion about it early on.

 

She shrugs, kind of carelessly. “Damned if I know. I didn’t grow up here.” She’s still holding on to you, and you can see how pale her face is. Maybe this is some weird woman-childbirth thing that you don’t understand. You’re usually good at reading Ma, but today she has you stymied.

 

Gramps is beaming at you both when you open the door, the consummate proud father, and you can feel, rather than see, Ma slump. “Can you believe it?” he ushers you both to seats beside the bed, where Grams is half-awake, the tiny little boy wrapped in blankets in her arms.

 

“And here you thought you’d be raising a little Tarzan in Neverland,” Ma quips, her eyes on her little brother as Gramps takes the baby and passes him into her arms. “Instead he’s gonna be a royal prince.” She stares down at him, and you can see some of the tension that’s suffused her until now finally fading away. She’s just been worried about her mother and new brother, that’s all.

 

You lean in closer, touching the tiny pink nose that’s poking out from the blankets. “He’s cute,” you offer, though he’s actually kind of ugly right now, all wrinkled and pink and squashed. You can’t imagine this baby being a real person someday, but here he is, your new uncle, eyes squinty and closed and fingers poking out of his blanket.

 

“He’s beautiful,” Ma says softly, and her eyes are tearing up a little as she stares at him, tracing the features of his face. She smiles wanly. “And hey, no curse approaching! Small favors, huh?”

 

Gramps’s eyes drop. “Emma-“

 

“David.” It’s barely a murmur from a sleepy Grams, but it’s enough for Gramps to bend back over her and leave the two of you still hovering over the baby. “Can I hold him?” you ask.

 

Ma is quick to pass him to you. “Let’s bring the kid out to meet the rest of the family and give your grandmother some time to rest,” she murmurs, leading you out of the room. The baby is cradled in your arms and you can’t stop staring down at him, a little amazed at this living bundle you’re carrying.

 

You part with him reluctantly when Granny scoops him out of your arms and shows him off to the rest of the room, which is getting more and more crowded as people hear the news, and it’s only because you’re watching Granny walk away that you see Ma slipping out the door silently.

 

You know where she’s going.

 

* * *

 

You’re already in place inside the wall opposite the couch, wishing you’d thought to bring your book, when Ma knocks at the door to Regina’s quarters and Regina emerges from her bedroom, dressed in satin grey pajamas and her hair puffy with bedhead. “Emma, what’s wrong?” she asks, her voice high with panic. “Is it Henry?”

 

Ma shakes her head slowly. “I…no. Nothing is wrong. It’s good news.” She manages a smile so forced it looks painful. “Mary Margaret had her baby. It’s a boy.”

 

Comprehension settles in Regina’s eyes as she immediately sees what you still haven’t. “Oh, Emma,” she murmurs, and she’s taking Ma’s hand and leading her to sit on the couch beside her, Ma still staring straight ahead with that awful smile on her face.

 

Regina speaks first. “Tell me they’re not naming him Leopold,” she says, producing a smile of her own, and Ma laughs tremulously, her eyes watery again.

 

“Oh, god, I hope not.” She leans back into the couch, and you’re still so confused. You don’t know why Regina is looking at Ma like there’s something she’s not saying, and why Ma is acting so strangely about her little brother, and why both of them are sitting here instead of celebrating with the rest of the castle. “They’ve wanted this so much. I’m happy for them,” Ma whispers, so low that you can barely hear it.

 

“I’m not,” Regina says flatly, and both you and Ma recoil at the same time.

 

“What?”

 

“I’m not,” Regina repeats. “Somehow, despite all setbacks and efforts to the contrary, Snow yet again has everything she’s ever wanted. And all I can think about is what I’ve lost.” Her voice is gentle, not angry at all, and you sense that this conversation is layered, the surface only window dressing for the message beneath. “I think about the casualties along the way, and the fact that I’m without something equal to what Snow and her family have gained today. I think anyone in that position would find it as difficult as I do to be happy for the Charmings,” she says, and you watch as Ma’s fingers wind through Regina’s where they rest on her thigh, her thumb curling around Regina’s hand.

 

“Of course, I’m a villain,” Regina says, and her eyes are warm when she turns to look at Ma. “I’m expected to be selfish about this sort of thing, not to nobly grin and bear it.”

 

A choked chuckle escapes from Ma’s throat. She doesn’t say anything, not until Regina turns back to gaze at the wall where you’re hiding, and only then does she turn, her head bent, and press her forehead into the crook of Regina’s neck. Her eyes are still wet but she’s not crying, and it’s in that moment that you finally decode Regina’s words to understand the expression on Ma’s face.

 

She’s _grieving_ , not for you or childbirth or the new baby, but for the childhood she’d never gotten that this little boy would have. Ma had been thrown into a new world without her parents, had grown up isolated and alone without the family that she’d found now, without any family at all until you’d come along. And now her mom and dad are getting a do-over with a new baby, getting to relive the joy of raising a child with all the love and care that Ma missed out on, and Ma’s expected to smile and love the baby and, as Regina says, grin and bear it.

 

You’re crying without realizing it, and it’s not even about Ma’s childhood or how terrible she must be feeling as much as it’s bitter tears at yourself, at how _stupid_ you’ve been not to notice that she was suffering. No one noticed, not even her parents or friends, and only Regina had been able to look at her and instantly know what was hurting her.

 

You remember Regina calling you selfish once, and you’d been outraged at the accusation until right now, huddled in a wall tearful over your mother and your own self-absorption. Because you’ve been so determined to keep Regina to yourself, so entitled as to feel angry whenever she spends time with Ma and so hurt whenever she neglects her book for even a few minutes. You’ve been so busy begrudging both of them for getting to have a relationship with each other like you can’t have with Regina that you haven’t been taking care of your ma at all lately. You haven’t been thinking about what she needs.

 

She needs Regina, just as much as you do, because all the reasons why you care about Regina and want her to be all yours are why Ma is just as attached to her. She understands you both and she knows just what to say and even when she’s cranky, she’s still very clear on how important you both are. When you’re around Regina, you _matter_ , not just as a kid or as a grandson but as a person, and Ma deserves that, too.

 

Your heart swells with love for the two of them, for how much they give to each other, and you’re glad for them even as you cry with renewed envy at the way that Ma can take comfort from Regina so freely, how she can bury her face in Regina’s neck and Regina can hold onto her hand so firmly that she anchors them both onto that couch.

 

And you’re separated from them both by a wall of stone.

 

* * *

 

You run back to Grams and Gramps when Ma starts talking again and Regina sends a warning glare your way, and you’re suddenly reminded that this might be a tiny violation of Ma’s privacy. Still, though, when Ma finally returns and excuses herself soon after to get some sleep, you follow her back to her room and sit with her until she falls asleep, feeling exceptionally protective of her today. “You’ll always have me,” you whisper before you slip out to find your book at last.

 

There’s a brief message in the book from Regina. _I’m sorry you had to leave, but I don’t think Miss Swan would be very thrilled to know that you were eavesdropping on that conversation. Look after her, Henry. I know you always do._

 

 **She fell asleep** , you report. **I think she’s feeling better now.** You hesitate for a moment and then write, **Thank you** , too.

 

A beat, then: _If you’d like, you can come on up here._ It’s the closest you’ve ever gotten to an invitation from Regina, and you run so quickly up the stairs to the east wing that you fall on your face twice, climbing through passageways until you can duck into the entrance on the right side of Regina’s quarters.

 

“Hello, Henry,” she says when you hunker down in the dusty passageway with your book. “How are you?”

 

You don’t really know what to say, or why Regina has suddenly summoned you here to begin with. Maybe it’s the baby, making everything emotional and raw. Maybe Regina’s just worried about Ma and wants to give her a break from mom duties. Your heart clenches in response to that, and you touch your chest gingerly, thinking about what you’re going to say.

 

And somehow, you wind up telling Regina everything, about your silly jealousy and how good she is for you and Ma and how much you _miss_ her, how sharing her- even sharing her with someone you love- has been hard but you think it’s worth it in the end. You’ve been self-centered and you’re so focused on Regina that sometimes you just want to damn the curse and throw open the door to the room and force this price to be unpaid if only so you’d get to look Regina in the eye.

 

You’re shaking when you finish writing and Regina’s eyes are wet and she says, “Henry, I never meant to make you feel ignored. I want you to be protected, and I want Emma to be able to do that for you because I can’t.”

 

 **Why not? What could possibly be so bad about forgetting the price that would make it worse than never being able to be with you?** you ask defiantly, swiping a hand across your eyes. **I don’t care about any of that.**

 

The stone door in front of you is beckoning, more tempting than ever, and you want to put an _end_ to this, you want to shove it open and run into Regina’s room and it’s so close, so easy, that your fingers are grasping for the latch before you can stop yourself, pushing at the wall so it creaks open in front of you and _Regina_ , she’s right there, so close you can taste it–

 

The door slams shut again with a burst of magic and a hiss from Regina and you fall back against the opposite wall, breathing hard. Regina’s eyes are panicked when you see her, disappointed and wild with distress, and she takes a step back, her hands still outstretched toward your secret door.

 

“You care about being a hero,” she says, taking a calming breath. “They’re all counting on you to be strong, to keep them safe.” She rubs the side of her neck, frustrated. “I should never have given you that book. You should never have come here. All it’s done is made this more difficult. There are too many people who stand to lose everything if we get too close, you know that.”

 

You glare at her through the wall. How can she be so unequivocal about this, about martyring you both to the whims of everyone else around you? None of this is fair. Not to you, and not to Regina. **And what about what we’ve lost?** you demand. **What about what we had in Storybrooke?**

 

You can see the moment she decides to lie in the way her face smoothes over and she turns away so you can only see her side profile. “Henry, I think you’ve severely overestimated the relationship we had in the other realm,” she says stiffly. “I know you’ve always had an overactive imagination, and I’m afraid it’s come to play now.” She’s choosing her words carefully, and you can feel your own world dropping out from beneath you as she speaks. She’s lying. She has to be. “You’re the son and grandson of some of my greatest foes in Storybrooke. What relationship could we have had?”

 

She continues, relentless. “The price has given you ideas about who we were to each other, but the truth is–“ Her voice cracks. “You’re the son of the savior. The only reason you were chosen to pay that price was because we might have needed Emma to train with me someday. You are a good boy, a noble prince, and you’re destined for greatness, but it’s not tied to me.” She shakes her head, turning back to you with glittering brown eyes. “You’re not tied to me.”

 

You write your accusations down, harsh and bold. **Liar. You’re lying. You know much too much about me.**

 

“You were my enemy’s son,” Regina says coolly. “It’s common sense to learn about her weakness.”

 

 **Ma says that you** –

 

But she’s talking before you can finish your sentence. “Your mother wants to protect you. She’d never want to dash your hopes. If she saw no need to tell you that you had an enemy in the castle, it’s only because she doesn’t perceive me as one. _Anymore_ ,” she emphasizes, and something dangerous flashes in her eyes, bare and vicious and so unlike the Regina you’ve come to know.

 

 **Then what about my heart?** It’s a challenge, your ace-in-the-hole, and it’s been twisting and leaving you breathless and anguished throughout this conversation. She can make up stories about Storybrooke but she can’t deny you _this_ , the one thing that’s remained constant in all your interactions with her. The one truth you still have.

 

Regina freezes. “What about your heart?”

 

 **It feels things when you’re around. It hurts and it beats differently and you can’t tell me that it’s a lie, too, Regina.** You write her name with extra force and it smears when a drop of wetness hits the paper. **You don’t control my heart.**

 

You see victory in her eyes as she turns to you, and if this is really nothing, then why does she look so heartbroken about it? “After you were kidnapped by Peter Pan in Neverland and your heart taken once, I anchored your heart with a spell so it could never be taken again. Henry…” she pauses, drawing out the syllables of your name, though it’s clear that she takes no joy in doing so. “It’s only a reaction to the magic that protects it. I’m sorry that you’ve been so misled. But none of that is worth us ignoring the price.” Her words drip with false sincerity but her face is smooth again, a mask so cold and distant that nothing can break through it anymore, and you press both hands against the door again, searching the façade for the woman you know beneath it.

 

Later, you think to point out that regardless of what happened in Storybrooke, you’ve developed something _here_ together that matters more than the price. Later, you have lots of retorts and reasonable arguments that shore up your points, and you think of a woman sobbing over your sneakers and you don’t want to believe anything she’s saying. Later, you have a thousand reasons why she _must_ be lying still.

 

That’s later.

 

Now there’s only you, miserable and shaken to the core as Regina struggles to keep her own face emotionless and everything you’ve come to believe is left in broken pieces at her feet. And all you can think to do is run from your hiding place and fly through the castle back to your room, where you curl up around the book and the lie that it’s been.

 

You don’t cry. It’s not like you’ve lost anything real.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THIS GOT MUCH TOO LONG but I didn't want to split another chapter so here's the (8k) finale for you! (I am very, very glad that I didn't try writing this as the oneshot I'd originally envisioned.) Anyway, much thanks to all of you for reading- I didn't think many people would be interested in a fic that's more gen than shippy, but you've all been wonderful and have shared so much insight on the assorted relationships here and really just been a delight to talk to about this, and I'm so grateful I got to hear from y'all. <333

You carry the book to breakfast and out to the stables and lay it down on the bench beside where Gramps is teaching you to fight with a sword. You bring it with you when you visit Grams and the baby and you bring it with you when Ma pulls you into the kitchens for what turns out to be Ruby and Granny secretly making American-style burgers for the castle.

 

You don’t open it. (For a minute after that burger, you think about it, but you resist.) You want to talk to Regina- you want to tell her everything, to demand answers for what she’d said, to accuse her of lies again until she _admits_ it- but instead you’re left hollow, betrayed, your heart beating a staccato rhythm against your chest as though in reminder and an odd familiarity to this feeling that you can’t place. You’re angry with her for lying, angry with her for the parts that must be true, and angriest of all that she’d do this to you in the first place. Regina has been a constant since your second week in this land, as close to family as Grams is, and her words cut deeper because of their intent, not even their content.  

 

You stay close to Grams and Gramps and avoid Ma, too, because Ma can always tell when you’re upset and you don’t want her to know about this. You’re still guarding your secrets with the same jealousy as before, the same desire for them to remain _just yours_ _and Regina’s_ , and no matter how much you distance yourself from Regina, you aren’t prepared to surrender that. You wonder if Regina still does the same, but you don’t dare say anything to Ma to find out.

 

Gramps shows up for dinner on your second day since you’ve last opened the book with a long cut running across the length of his arm. “Flying monkey with a knife got a little too close to the castle,” he explains briefly, wincing when Ma pulls up his torn sleeve to inspect the wound. “Our fortifications have been holding steady most of the time, but this one broke through.”

 

You think about suggesting that he bring it to Regina for healing, but you haven’t figured out what to say before Ma beats you to it, anyway. “That looks pretty nasty, David. I’m going to go get some help before it gets infected.” She looks at you for a moment, and it’s enough for you to know exactly what kind of help she’s getting. “Henry, do you think you could wait with Grams and the baby until I come get you?”

 

You shrug, climbing out of your seat, and you’re running up the stairs to where you know there’s a false panel in the ceiling of the dining hall before anyone notices that you’re not heading to Grams.

 

And when Regina sweeps in below, Ma’s fingers wrapped around her elbow as she follows, you’re startled to see that she’s wearing a grey dress- neat, conservative, and very much of your realm instead of hers. She isn’t in costume today, and when she sits down next to Gramps you can hear the low murmurs from everyone else in the room as they take her in, her clothes an anachronism in the room of royal finery.

 

Regina sighs, irritable already. “Why don’t you give it a try, Miss Swan?”

 

“You want my dad to be my guinea pig?” Ma says dubiously. “What if I accidentally turn him into a frog or something?” Gramps looks from woman to woman, and you almost laugh at the sudden trepidation on his face. You know he doesn’t like magic to begin with, and if Ma and Grams hadn’t been so insistent that Ma learn about her abilities, he’d probably take the injury over this volatile healing.

 

“Then there will be no difference,” Regina retorts archly. “Go ahead. Gather your magic, _will_ the skin to knit together properly.” Her voice softens. “You’re capable of this.”

 

“Okay.” Ma licks her lips and shuts her eyes, but you’re not watching her and Gramps anymore, not when Regina’s face is tilting upward toward the wooden panel that conceals you, frowning at the narrow crack where you’re peering through at her. She can’t see you but you can see her perfectly, enough to trace the worn lines of her face and the darkness in her eyes.

 

She looks as though she hasn’t slept in days, as though there’s some immeasurable sadness she’s been coping with, and it’s worse than she’d been even before you’d ever spoken through the book.

 

It has nothing to do with you, you tell yourself, because it would be silly and naïve to think otherwise.

 

* * *

 

Somehow, though, you’re back the next night, walking the familiar route to the east wing and slipping into your usual spot behind the walls of Regina’s study, watching her through the gaps in the stone. She’s reading at her table, a hot drink in one hand, and her head is dipping so low as she squints at the words that you can barely see her face.

 

You’re still holding your book but you don’t open it, not even when you see the identical book still resting on the bench beside the sorceress. You remain in place, still and quiet, and you watch her read with quiet intensity, imagining a cord that ties you to her still, that keeps you connected even when she denies that that connection exists.

 

And it must be true, because she raises her face after dozens of minutes hunched over in place and you know that she senses you at last. You don’t know how to qualify the expression that settles on her face, resigned and helpless and hopeful all at once as she whispers, “Henry?”

 

She opens your shared book and you hold on tight to yours as she flips to the last page where you’d written, the words still standing out at you against the worn white of the paper. **You don’t control my heart.**

 

“Henry?” she says again, and her voice is almost timid, almost longing, almost how you’ve been feeling for the past three days.

 

You don’t respond, you don’t open the book, and she falls silent again, her eyes on the unchanging page as your own eyes bore holes into her bent figure.

 

* * *

 

And now it’s the same ritual, night after night, sneaking back into Regina’s quarters to check in on her. She looks more exhausted with each passing night, more worn out and unhappy, and she sleeps stretched out across the couch beside your spot in the wall more often than not.

 

You don’t even notice that you’ve been doing the exact same thing until Grams comments on the bags under your eyes one morning. “Have you been sleeping well?”

 

“I’m fine,” you mumble.

 

“You don’t look fine,” she says, and you flush and stare stubbornly at the wall, refusing to acknowledge it. Your back hurts from hunching over in one position so often, your eyes hurt from squinting through the stone, and your heart hurts because it hasn’t stopped since the moment Regina told you that it was just a magical side effect.

 

Grams fusses over you and you can’t help but think about Regina, locked away in her quarters, with no one to take care of her like Grams takes care of you. You shouldn’t feel so bad about it but you do anyway, and it’s why you follow Ma to the east wing the next time she heads there.

 

You don’t like watching Ma and Regina interact anymore, not when your book remains closed and Ma can reach out to touch Regina anytime, can sit beside her on the couch shoulder-to-shoulder and talk as freely as anyone else can. You don’t like looking at the rare smirk that spreads across Regina’s face when Ma’s around, at the way her eyes light up with life for even a moment of argument with Ma.

 

You’re not quite sure which urge is stronger in you now- the desire to see Regina as affected by your absence as you are hers, or the need to see her happy for even a moment without you, and Ma complicates everything by making that happiness so _easy_ for Regina when it’s still so hard for you.

 

Regina’s eyes are half-lidded right now and emotionless as she leans back against her armchair, staring up at Ma. “Bees.”

 

“ _Killer_ bees,” Ma insists. “David thinks enough of them can break through all the protective barriers we’ve set up.” Her hands are twisting against her sides with impatience you recognize as eagerness. “We should really fortify the lake boundaries.”

 

Regina studies her, unconvinced. “Are you trying to force me outside?” she demands. “Do you know how reckless that is?”

 

Ma shrugs. “The Witch already knows you’re still alive or she wouldn’t be sending all these scouts instead of coming herself. And Henry’s in bed.” You catch the way Regina flinches at your name, the way Ma watches her with sharp eyes. “There’s no reason not to go out there.”

 

“I have no desire to spend any time outside my quarters.” Regina curls her lip in disdain. “If you want to fortify the barriers, we can do it from here.”

 

You can see the knowing way Ma cocks her head at Regina. “Come on, Regina. When’s the last time you’ve been outside?” She pauses, frowning. “When’s the last time you’ve had a visitor aside from me?”

 

Regina rolls her eyes. “I’m not like you. I don’t _need people_. Especially not these people.”

 

“When, Regina.”

 

The other woman looks down, uncomfortable. “Tink came by plenty until you arrived.”

 

Ma brightens. “Oh yeah, I saw her out on patrols. She got her wings back.”

 

“A bribe.” Regina rolls her eyes. “The Blue Fairy wanted her away from me, so she offered her fairyhood again on strict conditions.”

 

“And she just sold out like that?” Ma looks displeased, almost angry with the fairy they’re talking about, and you make a mental note to ask Grams about Tink next time you see her. “That’s kind of shitty of her.”

 

But Regina is shaking her head. “I told her to do it. I won’t have her ruining her life for me.” She says something else, low and bitter, but you can’t make it out and Ma can’t either, judging from the way she stares at Regina after.

 

Finally she shifts, her eyes steeling like she does when you’ve tried her patience a little too far. “You’re coming outside with me,” she orders. “This- this thing you do where you sit around and wallow-“ Regina’s head jerks up, outraged, and Ma ignores her. “It’s unhealthy and it’s useless and…” Her voice falters. “I don’t like to see you like this, okay?” Ma murmurs, turning to the door, and she shuffles out of the room, not checking to see if Regina follows.

 

You’re startled to see that she does without complaint.

 

* * *

 

You wait a good ten minutes before you exit your spot in the wall and take off after them, slipping out through a back entrance and making your way around the castle wall toward the lake. From far you can see the water roiling, reflecting the moonlight in a wave of silver energy, jets of it shooting up and falling down all through the lake like the kind of water show you’ve gone with Ma to see on holidays. You stop to watch it with curious wonder, to study the whirling water and the waves crashing into each other in the normally calm lake, and only then do you catch sight of the two figures silhouetted against the rising water.

 

It’s unmistakably Ma and Regina, Regina’s fingers tight on Ma’s waist and Ma’s hand at the back of Regina’s neck. They’re kissing, magical energy flowing around them and into the lake, and you freeze in place, your book dropping from your arms as you stare at them. You can’t look away for a long moment, can’t do anything but gape at the two of them as they remain locked together in each other’s embrace, oblivious to the energy powering the lake or anything else but each other.

 

You finally remember yourself and run, run far from both of them, from the magic and the kissing and the inevitability of it all until you can fling yourself across your bed, panting, relieved and upset and not sure at all how you feel about any of this yet.

 

* * *

 

You come back from breakfast in the morning and find your book tucked under your pillow, the gold edging poking out over your blanket. You wonder if it’s enchanted to return to you when you lose it. You wonder if Regina saw it on the ground and magicked it back to you.

 

You wonder if she knows what you saw last night.

 

* * *

 

 **Were you my stepmom?** You stare down at the words, scribbled across the page hastily like you’d been afraid that you’d lose courage halfway through the question, and then look up again at Regina, who’s leaning back against the couch, watching Ma with lazy eyes as she tries to keep a fireball in her hand for long enough to hurl it Regina’s way. She looks loose and relaxed for the first time since you’ve met her and the sadness is only lurking at the corner of her eyes now, and you try not to think about what might have triggered this change in her.

 

It’s the first time you’ve thought about writing to her again in a long time, and maybe it’s because she seems so content when you’re _not_ , when you’re both supposed to be miserable and it’s all her fault and if she’s forgotten about you for even a second with Ma, it isn’t fair at all.

 

You scold yourself for your thoughts because there’s a second part of you that’s glad to see Regina like this, that’s glad to know that Ma cares about her and is looking out for her (even if you _never_ want to see them kiss again, but that’s your prerogative as long-suffering son), and you’re so _confused_ , you’re jealous and you’re happy and you’re resentful and you’re relieved and you just want to talk to Regina and feel like you matter to her again, like you’re…

 

You inhale a muffled sob, because you’ve never wanted any of your theories to be as true as this newest one. Regina’s stepson. Regina’s _son_. You want that family, you and Ma and Regina, and you want that to be the memories you’ve lost.

 

But if Regina looks at her book, you don’t see it, and your question remains unanswered no matter how many times over the next few days you check for a response.

 

* * *

 

“I’m still worried about Henry,” Ma says, and you perk up at the mention of your name. You’ve been studying them for a while, eyes pressed to your peephole in the wall and your book still tight against your chest as you take in the scene in the study. Regina is sitting at her table in her usual position, but Ma is perched on the table with little more than a disapproving look from the sorceress in question, a leg planted on the edge of Regina’s chair and Regina’s palm splayed over her thigh. They look…comfortable, at home together, and you struggle not to imagine how they’d sit in your apartment in New York, Ma on the floor between Regina’s legs while you curl up on the couch beside Regina, watching some terrible action movie that you and Ma have demanded.

 

You want…

 

It doesn’t matter what you want.

 

You catch the guilt that crosses Regina’s face when Ma speaks, the tensing of her jaw and the way her eyes immediately drop to the spellbook she’s supposed to be reading. “I’m sure he’s fine,” she says tightly.

 

“Really?” Ma squints at her. “I’m worried about Henry and that’s all you have to say?”

 

Regina doesn’t meet her eyes, and her hand drops from where it had been drawing circles against Ma’s knee. “He’s an adolescent. They’re prone to mood swings and inexplicable behavior.”

 

Ma shrugs. “So are you, but I’d still be worried if you were skipping our lessons and walked around like the weight of the world was on your shoulders.”

 

“I’m sure he’ll get over it.” Her fingers trace the pattern of her name on her book, and Ma reaches out to grab it. You tense, but Regina’s faster, and Ma disappears and reappears across the room, slipping onto the floor butt-first.

 

“Hey!”

 

Regina ignores her, her lips twitching nearly imperceptibly. “Henry will be fine. You’ve taken good care of him.”

 

Ma’s eyes widen and she vanishes in her own cloud of magic, but she doesn’t reappear for a few moments, and you snicker when you hear her cursing from an indistinct pattern of movement that ripples in the air. Regina sighs and lifts a hand, magicking her back in place on the table. Ma’s smiling, her eyes soft with emotion. “What?” Regina barks out.

 

Ma shrugs. “Oh, nothing.” But she leans down to kiss Regina and Regina pulls her onto her lap, and you make a face and a hurried departure before you witness anything too scarring. Spying on their magic lessons has become a perilous game since that night at the lake.

 

* * *

 

You still sleep in Regina’s walls even after Ma comments on your absence at night, concerned that you’re sleepwalking again like you’ve been doing for the past year, walking into walls and dreaming about doors and rooms that don’t exist. “I’m fine,” you mumble, and if Regina and you were talking you’d ask her about the sleepwalking, if it had been a side effect of your memories being taken away.

 

Some nights Regina knows you’re there, and you watch from the wall as she lies down to sleep on the couch beside you. Other nights you enter the wall and can see her sitting on the floor, back ramrod-straight against your hidden door, and you sit with your own back against the other side, only the thick stone between you. You open your book each time and you see no messages, but you can’t pull yourself away.

 

Still other nights she isn’t there at all. You know she must be in her bedroom, where there are no outer walls where you can watch her, and you leave those nights before you fall asleep. There’s a gulf between you now that had never been there when you’d shared the books and spoken to each other, and now the empty room and the photograph on the desk only mock you with their presence.

 

You don’t like seeing her quarters without her, and when you arrive one night and find her absent, you sigh, feeling weariness beyond your age, and turn to go.

 

A shadow passes in your peripheral vision and you twist, peering back into the room with renewed hope as you see a figure dressed in one of Regina’s robes bent down into the refrigerator at the doorway to the kitchen.

 

“Jackpot,” you hear the exclamation, and startle. That isn’t Regina.

 

The figure stands, and then you see the blonde curls and you’re absolutely outraged because it’s…

 

“ _Ma_?”

 

You say it too loud, your brain already freezing over with the realization of what exactly Ma is doing in Regina’s quarters and robe in the middle of the night, and Ma jerks, her eyes going wide. “ _Henry?_ ” she demands, her voice exactly your tone. “Where are you?” She looks around wildly, glaring at the photo on the desk as though it’s the one talking. “What the hell are you doing here?”

 

You push the stone wall aside, almost amused at the way Ma jumps as the wall slides open. “What am I doing here?” you echo. “What are _you_ doing here? Don’t tell me that,” you add quickly, glancing at the closed door to the bedroom with sudden queasiness. “I don’t want to know.”

 

Ma shakes her head, still gaping at you. “Does Regina know you’re here?” She closes her eyes. “Of course she does. Why do I even ask?”

 

You stare at her as she turns back to the kitchen, opening a drawer and snagging two spoons, brandishing the jar of peanut butter she’s holding like it’s a beacon of peace. “Sit down,” she orders. “We’re gonna talk now.”

 

You eye her doubtfully. “Regina would never let you eat peanut butter straight from the jar. It’s unsanitary.”

 

“What are you, my mother?” Ma wrinkles her nose at you. “It’s chunky peanut butter. It’s meant to be eaten plain.”

 

“I don’t think that’s a thing.” Still, you follow her to the kitchen and sit at the table, retrieving a spoon and digging in. It tastes like home, like years of sandwiches and school and a world you suddenly miss more than ever. Ma nearly moans and you narrow your eyes at her. “Are you just using me to make sure that Regina doesn’t come out here and yell at you?”

 

“Ha ha.” She licks the side of her spoon, eyes falling closed with ecstasy.

 

You’re not impressed. “That’s not an answer.”

 

She dips her finger into the jar and swipes your forehead, leaving a dot of peanut butter behind. And when you wipe it away, the blissful expression on her face is gone and she’s staring at you with eyes that know too much. “So. What’d she do to you?”

 

“Wh-what?”

 

“What’d she do to you? Say to you,” she amends. “Write to you? What did Regina do that’s had you so down?”

 

You grip the book in one hand, feeling more betrayed than you have since that first night of lies. “Regina told you that we’ve been writing to each other.”

 

Ma frowns. “Regina? No. She guards that book like it holds all the secrets of the universe, just like you do.” She leans forward, poking you in the forehead again. “With your _exactly identical secret book_. C’mon kid, I might not have made straight A’s in junior high like you, but I’m not an idiot. Who do you think stuck yours under your pillow last week?”

 

“Oh.” You feel like an idiot yourself, suddenly, that Ma has seen the obvious and you’d never even thought of the risk there. “Are you…are you going to tell anyone?”

 

Ma digs into the peanut butter again, swirling her tongue over the metal of the spoon contemplatively. “You know, the first thing I thought when I got my memories back was what a crap deal you and Regina had with this new curse. Everyone…well, Mary Margaret, anyway…she thought about it in terms of what Regina had lost. And she thinks that it’s some kind of redemptive sacrifice that makes Regina the hero of the story, someone who’s finally managed to join the side of good. Maybe she’s right, I don’t know.” She chews on a peanut. “No one seems to understand how much you’d lost with your memories. And what it’s like for Regina, knowing what you’ve both lost when you don’t.”

 

You lay your book down on the table, staring at the engraved cover. “Regina says that we didn’t have anything in Storybrooke.” You repeat the words you still remember mechanically, the arguments she’d presented that you’d shouted off as lies and still can’t quite believe. The idea that you were only Ma’s son, the idea that you’re only her price because of that, the idea that your heart is magically keyed to her because it’s anchored.

 

And when you’re done, Ma rolls her eyes and leans forward on her hands, giving you the words you’ve been craving for weeks. “Henry, Regina is a _liar_.”

 

You’re horrified to discover that you’re crying, ugly tears spilling free with that revelation and the confirmation you’ve been so desperate for. And then Ma’s there, guiding you to the other room to sit down on the couch, wrapping an arm around you and pulling you close. “You know, someone once tried to take my heart out,” she murmurs. “And you know why it didn’t work? You know what anchors hearts?”

 

You shake your head, your book still tight in your arms. “Love,” Ma says. “True love. The kind that breaks curses and inspires fairy tales and can pay the price for saving a whole town. And I’ve had my doubts about Regina in the past- the lady’s been a terror at the best of times and we had much more in the way of the worst of times together- but I haven’t doubted her love for you since the first weeks that we met.” You can see her blurry smile through your tears. “Regina has always been consistent on that one thing.”

 

“Then why did she-“ You know why she lied to you, why she’d said the things she did. You remember the door in the wall creaking open, the exhilarating feeling of discarding the price and seeing Regina at last, and the way your world had fallen apart moments later with a few well-placed words.

 

“She knows you hate- more than anything else- being lied to.” Ma squeezes your shoulder. “And the Regina we knew in Storybrooke used to hold on to the people she loved a little too tightly, but Regina here…I think she’s started pushing people away when it’s too dangerous to keep them close. Pulling an Emma,” she mumbles, a little ruefully. She scowls, unhappy with her own revelation.

 

You match her scowl. “You never pushed _me_ away,” you point out, and Ma’s face falls and she’s suddenly holding you tighter than before, squeezing you so close to her that you can barely breathe, and you hear a single sob escape her throat before she buries her face in your hair and cradles you against her like you’re a baby again.

 

“Regina ruined my life,” she whispers when she’s able to talk again. “Ruined it moments after I was born, then spent my first year in Storybrooke trying to ruin it again.” She presses a kiss to your forehead, her eyes somewhere far away. “And then she gave me everything that’s ever mattered to me one day a year ago at-“ She loosens her grip on you and you both sag. “At a price that I don’t think I can ever repay. To give you your best chance.”

 

“I don’t understand,” you say uncertainly.

 

Ma cocks her head, watching you with easy warmth. “Let’s talk about stuff, okay? Just you and me. Go back to your room, I’m just going to-“ She nods to the closed door to the bedroom. “Say goodnight.”

 

You wrinkle your nose. “Aren’t you…in the middle of a date or something?”

 

Ma gives you a little shove as she stands up. “You’re always gonna come first. For both of us,” she says, glancing at Regina’s door. “Don’t ever doubt that.”

 

* * *

 

Ma’s wearing Regina’s pajamas when she climbs into your bed next to you, but you don’t say anything about it, just rest your head against the satin on her arm and say, “What was it like in Storybrooke? Between us and Regina, I mean.”

 

Ma shifts. “We were nemeses, kind of. She and I, I mean. Not you. She always loved you.”

 

“Always?” you repeat. “Always from when?”

 

Ma doesn’t answer that. “She did use you as a pawn to drive a wedge between us at first, which was pretty crappy and just made me madder. Never a smart idea to make me angry.” She winks at you from the other side of the pillow and you laugh. “I may have taken a chainsaw to her favorite tree once. Of course, then she accidentally poisoned you with a magic apple turnover, so-“

 

“How do you _accidentally_ poison someone?” This is the evil queen you’ve heard of, and you’re fascinated and perplexed. If Regina had loved you- and Ma insists that she did- then she really hadn’t been very good at loving, had she?

 

Ma shrugs. “Oh, it had been meant for me. You ate it to prove to me that all of this-“ She waves at the room around you. “-Was real, and that your…Regina was the villain of the story.” Her eyes are warm again. “They keep calling me the Savior, but you were just as much a savior as I was. I kissed you and woke you up, and we broke the curse together.”

 

“What did Regina do?”

 

“When you were hurt?” Ma furrows her brow. “She helped me save you. Actually shoved me into a fight with a dragon.” She shakes her head. “Simpler times. And why does that make me nostalgic now instead of furious?”

 

“Because now you’re in love with her?” you suggest.

 

Ma lets out a funny little croak, her eyes rounding in denial. “Whoa, whoa, let’s not–“

 

You raise your eyebrows at her smugly. “Because now you’re sleeping with her?”

 

Ma rolls over so her back is to you. “Please go away right now and come back when you’re five again. I want my baby back.” She falls silent then, her breath turning ragged and coming too fast, but she doesn’t turn over again until you poke her and ask more questions about Regina and Storybrooke and the years you can’t remember.

 

She answers them all, though she’s still holding back on the information you don’t know enough to ask for, and you talk and talk until the early morning, just you and your ma in pajamas that smell like a home you can’t possibly remember. 

 

* * *

 

You awaken to low voices, your room still dim enough that you can tell it’s barely sunrise. Ma is standing in the doorway, still in pajamas with her hair rumpled from sleep, and you can just make out Grams in front of her. “We don’t know how long she’s been trapped in there,” Grams is saying. “The guards only saw the green smoke coming from her window when they changed stations. And no one can break through the wards on her door.”

 

Ma nods, spins around, and you’re being yanked out of bed before you can even rub your eyes, pulled toward the door and past Grams as you stumble along and she calls after you, “You’re bringing _Henry_ with you?”

 

“Where are we going?” you venture, but you recognize this path better than anyone, and your brain is waking up enough to piece together the information you have. Someone trapped in her room. Green smoke in the window.

 

Regina is trapped in her quarters, and the Wicked Witch has come visiting.

 

You quicken your pace behind Ma, panting as she strides up staircases and through hallways without looking back. “Time to save the day, Henry,” is all she says, and her jaw is clenched and you think that maybe this is your fault. Maybe if Ma had been in there with Regina when the Witch had come…

 

You can’t think like that. Ma would have been in just as much danger as Regina, maybe more. And you, better than anyone, know that there’s still hope for Ma to help with the fight as long as you’re with her.

 

Gramps is in the passageway outside Regina’s quarters with five other men and a large, metal-headed battering ram, slamming it against the door again and again as you approach. The door remains firm, green magic leaking out from inside, and Ma squeezes your shoulder and steps forward. “Hey, David.”

 

“Emma, thank the gods you’re here.” Gramps holds up a hand and the men stop moving. “We’ve been at a loss. Whatever’s going on in there, the Witch isn’t looking for guests.”

 

Ma glares at the door as though it’ll burst into flames through sheer willpower alone. “She’ll have one.”

 

“Look…” Gramps glances at you once and then he’s guiding Ma away from you, back away from Regina’s door and that sickly magic that it glows with. You follow anyway, catching your mother’s eye as you do. “There’s been no shouting, no screaming. Nothing that sounds like the Witch is hurting Regina at all. Just low voices talking, and…it’s possible the Witch has managed to recruit a partner.”

 

You stare at Gramps with incredulity, and Ma mirrors your face. “Seriously, David? Aren’t we past that?”

 

Gramps sighs, ducking his head. “I guess so, but she’s still…” He blinks. “What are you wearing?”

 

Ma ignores him, high spots on appearing on her cheeks as she turns back to you. “Henry, can you get me in?”

 

You answer by walking to a familiar spot on the wall and tracing the stone bricks you know better than any, finding the place where they slide silently into the wall. Ma ducks in without hesitation, turning back only to say, “Don’t come after me, Dad. I’ll get the door open as quickly as I can, but I don’t think anything but magic is going to hurt the Witch.”

 

You’ve never heard her call Gramps Dad before and he’s just as startled as you, his lips curling into a surprised smile and parting to say, “Emma…” one last time before she vanishes into the passageway.

 

You make to follow her when Gramps lays a restraining hand on your shoulder. “You can’t go in there, Henry. It’s too dangerous.” He winces. “You shouldn’t be here at all, actually. There’s nothing stopping the Witch from charging out here and killing us all.”

 

You want to protest, to point out that you’re a master at finding your way through the castle undetected and that you’re the perfect one to spy on whatever’s going on in Regina’s quarters right now, but Gramps is shaking his head and looking at you like you’re just a kid, suddenly, and you don’t have time to argue with him. So you shrug sulkily and stalk away from Gramps, back along the way you’ve come, and wait until you’re two corridors away before you push aside a faded portrait on the wall and slip into the hole in the wall behind it.

 

The passage here is dustier, rarely used, and you stumble a few times before you make it back to your usual place behind Regina’s quarters– where you immediately bump into the figure crouched by your spot behind the couch. “Dammit! Henry?” Ma glares at you in the dim light. “Do not move from this spot, understood?”

 

You nod, afraid to make a sound, and then you hear the low, chilling laugh. “Well, well, well. Do we have a visitor? Please, do come out and make yourself at home.” The voice is soft and dangerous, and your skin breaks out in goosebumps as you peer through the wall and see the green-skinned woman with her eyes on Ma.

 

“Oh, crap.” Ma fumbles with the wall, struggling to push it open, and you slide a hand over to the latch, guiding her fingers with you. “Not a word,” she warns you, and then she’s pushing the door open and swaggering out into Regina’s apartment as though she’d really gotten a personal invitation.

 

You peek through the wall as she slams the door shut, taking in the room beyond the wall. It’s filled with that magical green smoke that sits heavily in place, not drifting, not moving, densest near the center of the room where the witch stands and wispier at the edges, where Ma is striding out of. And Regina is wrapped in the thickest of the magic, green energy heavy around her, the sorceress suspended in midair as the Witch circles her. “And who is this?” the Witch coos, tugging on Regina’s loose hair as Regina glares down at her. “Not the apprentice my ravens spoke of?”

 

“Emma, your presence here is unnecessary,” Regina bites out. “This is between me and Zelena.”

 

Ma rolls her eyes. “Yeah, it really looks like you don’t need me.” She’s chewing on her lip, her brow furrowed like it does whenever she calls up her magic, and the air ripples outward, sending shockwaves of blue through the green smoke, shoving it aside with sheer force as it surges toward Regina. Regina’s purple magic emerges from her faster than you’ve ever seen, flowing into the blue as though it’s drawn to it, and she falls to the ground as the green smoke unravels, retreating back into the Wicked Witch.

 

“Now this is interesting,” the Witch says, delicately stepping to the side as Ma’s and Regina’s magic seems to burst outward, casting low shadows on the walls until they’re glowing with the energy, too, the whole room thrumming with magic. Ma is standing in front of Regina now, hands held outward protectively, and you notice with some concern that the purple magic is dissipating while the blue remains. How long had Regina been held here without anyone knowing? How much energy does she have left?

 

The Witch smiles, low and threatening, and then she’s attacking again, sparks of green energy hurling themselves at Ma from every direction until Ma is whirling around, her own magic faltering at the attack on all sides. It’s more than you’ve ever seen Regina teach her to cope with and she’s unable to counter it, and you cry out, unheard in the crackling magic, as a green fireball hits her arm and turns Regina’s pajama sleeve to ash in an instant. “Dammit!” Ma manages before she charges forward, ignoring the pain in her arm, and pulls back her left fist and punches the Witch in the face.

 

“So much more effective,” Regina murmurs from where she’s still crouched on the floor, smirking through the tension as the Witch reels back, eyes flashing dangerously. “Like a bull in a china shop.”

 

“Turns you on a little, doesn’t it?” Ma tosses back, but she’s grinning, bouncing on the balls of her feet and drawing back for another punch. This time the Witch fades away as Ma moves forward and reappears behind her, pressing two fingers to the back of her neck and conjuring more green energy that tightens around it. Ma chokes, slipping forward into the desk as her magic whirls wildly around her. “Re-Regina-“

 

“Let her go,” Regina orders. “Your quarrel is with me, not my apprentice.” You know her well enough to recognize the panic at the edges of her voice, threatening to escape the steel in which she encases her words.

 

The Witch shakes her head, winding a second ring of magic around Ma’s neck, and your fingers are on the latch to the door. You won’t stand by and let Ma die, not when Regina is too weak to fight and you’re so close to them both. You don’t even think about the price of stepping out there, not when Ma is in danger.

 

“I’ve been observing you for a long time, Regina.” She laughs lowly. “She seems to matter very much to you, and that makes all the difference. As does the little brat,” she adds, triumph in her voice. “Where is the boy today, I wonder?”

 

It’s enough for both Ma and Regina to jerk into action, Ma’s foot slamming down on the Witch’s as Regina leaps to her feet, her magic alive and dangerous around her. “You stay the hell away from him,” she hisses as the Witch’s magic releases Ma. “I will destroy you.”

 

“Perhaps he’s tucked safely into bed,” the Witch muses, stepping aside easily. “Like a good little boy.” Her eyes shift, and you can see the magic glowing behind them as they settle on your face, behind the wall. “But he isn’t a good little boy, is he?”

 

Ma leaps on her, yanking her by the hair until she fades out of sight again, and this time, the storm of green magic is faster than before, rapidly whirling around Ma while she struggles to fight it.

 

And then…somehow…her eyes fall shut and her magic swells outward again, stronger than before and more focused, batting aside each attack as though they’re easy to avoid. She’s using magic like a pro and you forget to be afraid because you’re so impressed up until the moment that you see the purple strings of magic that have wound their way from Regina’s fingers to Ma, guiding her through the motions like a magical puppetmaster. Regina’s forehead is shiny with sweat and Ma is panting but they’re warding off the blows even as the magic surges stronger around them, green fireballs dancing closer and closer as the Witch remains out of sight.

 

You can still hear her breathing, though, somewhere close by, and when you hear the voice millimeters from your ear whisper, “Hello, Henry,” you can only brace yourself against the wall, preparing for your own destruction.

 

* * *

 

The Witch’s hand is pressed to the thin material of your pajamas, splayed across your back, burning with magic against your skin. “Not a sound, little boy,” she murmurs.

 

Ma is leaping through the air like an acrobat, shooting her magic across the room while Regina controls her movements, and neither of them seems aware of the danger you’re in. You want to cry out but you can feel the witch’s breath sending prickling fear through your neck, can see the faint glow of her green magic, and you remain silent instead. “I think,” she whispers, “If I take you both, Regina will have nothing. The girl is useless without Regina, and you’re just a helpless child, aren’t you?” She’s not like the movie villain, all futile attacks and sneering faces. This Wicked Witch of the West is cool and assessing, every silken word from her mouth calculated to inspire terror. “What can you do?”

 

You can almost hear the smile in her voice as she leans forward. “For that matter, what can _she_?”

 

You think she’s talking about Ma until you see the energy glowing in the kitchen, a green fireball that’s growing in size as Ma darts from side to side, fighting the storm of energy that still has yet to lessen. Regina’s eyes are fixed on her and the maelstrom around her, oblivious to the danger behind her as the energy surges up toward her back.

 

Your finger is still hooked on the latch, and the Witch’s hand is still sizzling against your skin.

 

You don’t think about it, about the danger behind you and the world you’ve promised to keep safe, about the Witch or Grams’s warnings or the fact that you’re still very angry with Regina. You see the fireball heading toward her and you simply _react_ , flying out of the wall and away from the witch to throw yourself at Regina, shoving her aside as the fireball hits the couch instead and turns it into a black pile of ash.

 

Regina turns at the last moment, sensing your movement, and her arms stretch out to catch you, dark eyes meeting yours for the first time, and the world shimmers around you as you stare at each other. “ _Henry_ ,” she breathes. “Oh, no.”

 

Because you can see the reflection in her eyes of more green smoke, lighter than the Witch’s but just as potent-looking, and you don’t want to look around, to see the price that you’re all going to pay because of your recklessness. You don’t want to look anywhere but up at Regina as she holds you, her eyes shining and her heart captured within them, and you’re both frozen in place instead of reacting as the green smoke billows into the room.

 

“Regina!” You hear Ma from a distance. “It’s Pan’s curse!”

 

 _That_ registers for both of you and you startle, taking in your surroundings. The green smoke is coming closer, the magic steeped within the room the only thing slowing it down, and the Witch is putting up shields that fall as quickly as they come. “What have you done, boy?” she hisses, stumbling toward you. Regina tightens her hold on you, turning to raise a hand to the witch, and you catch sight of Ma running through green smoke with her own hands outstretched.

 

The Witch strikes as Ma does the same, sparks of blue and green crashing into Regina’s purple and radiating outward back at their casters just as Pan’s curse thunders around you all.

 

There’s a roaring in your ears, drowning out your cry, and you duck down as Regina wraps her arms around you and keeps your head at her shoulder. And then you’re all four captured within the magical blending of light and dark, caught in the smoke as it whirls around you but can’t do any damage against the combined power of Regina and Ma and the Witch; and you’re floating, tight in Regina’s hold, as the Witch and Ma fight to make it toward you through the smoke.

 

You try shifting but it’s like moving through molasses, heavy and slow and dull, and your body hurts from the effort. “What do we do?” you call, loud enough that Regina can hear through the smoke.

 

She shakes her head, slow and unsteady. “Wait for the curse to take hold, I suppose. I don’t know.” She smiles down at you, eyes bright with tears. “I’m sorry. I never wanted you to be here, or for this to happen. I wanted you to be safe.”

 

“I’m not sorry,” you admit, because you can’t regret saving Regina’s life. Whatever price you’d paid is undone and the world as you’d known it might have vanished, but there’s a part of you that’s glad to have her holding you now. It feels familiar, like you can fold into her embrace as if you’ve done it a million times, and it’s selfish and maybe horrible too, but you can’t be sorry even suspended within this haze of green. “You can break the curse, can’t you?”

 

Ma had told you how you’d done it together. A kiss. A kiss of true love. If that’s all it takes… You manage to turn your head, watching Ma wade through the smoke like she’s treading water, struggling to reach you.

 

“We won’t remember,” Regina says as quietly as she can and still be heard, following your gaze. “You won’t remember each other. And without your memories, you might be drawn to her, but _love_ …” She sighs, looking more forlorn than you’ve seen her in a long time, and she’s caught Ma’s gaze with her sad eyes as she speaks to you. “We’ll be strangers to each other.”

 

Ma says something but the curse is roaring around you and you can only see her mouth your name before she gives up, snapping something that’s almost certainly not meant for your ears. “We were strangers,” you point out, and your heart clenches in response. “That doesn’t mean that I don’t–!”

 

You stop, because Regina is frowning down at you like she doesn’t know what you’re going to say and you know that she’ll reject it if you dare admit it. That she’s still afraid of what you might mean to her, just like Ma insists. “It doesn’t mean I don’t love you,” you shout out over the rumble of the curse, and you pull your head up high enough to kiss her on the cheek.

 

Multicolored light shudders out from where your lips touch Regina’s skin, and the smoke is blown apart by the energy of your love before you can pull back from Regina–

 

 _No. Not Regina_. The memories hit so hard that you stagger backward into the key table in the entryway of your childhood home, overcome. _Not–_ You see it in flashes, Storybrooke and growing up and your storybook and Emma and magic and Neverland and _Mom, MomMomMom_ and a thousand memories lost of hugs and kisses and sternness and tension and love, strongest of all, enough to transform her into a hero all for you. You’re sobbing without realizing, crying and laughing and you can’t even see anything through the tears except the dark-haired woman standing still a few feet away.

 

“Mom.” You say it in the same tone as she’d said your name earlier, slowly and reverently, and you lurch forward back into her arms. “Mom?”

 

“Henry. Oh, Henry,” she sighs like a prayer, and you want to stay there forever, choking out words that don’t make sense into her shirt as she trembles in your arms and you both shake together in tandem.

 

A shriek of fury sounds behind you and you feel Mom tense beneath you. _The Witch._

 

But it’s Ma who whirls around from her place by the stairs- _you’re home, you’re really home-_ the burn on her arm gone and her fists clenched again as the Witch advances, hands outstretched uselessly as her magic refuses to come forward. She’s halfway through the entryway to the home you’ve grown up in (for more than a decade, until everything changed and Emma came and Pan’s curse and now you have memories of a second home, an apartment full of light that’s as magical in your memories now as anything else Mom has done) when your Ma rushes her, smirking. “Welcome to the land without magic,” she says, and adds a rather non-maternal word that makes Mom growl,  _“Emma!”_  before her fist connects with the Witch’s face again and the Witch drops to the ground.

 

Gramps is rushing through the front door before you and Mom can even think about standing up- and Mom is so close to you now, in your arms, and you don’t ever want to let go again- and you can see his eyes move to you and Mom before he turns back to Ma. “Were we…?”

 

“Cursed?” She nods. “Yeah.” And there’s awe in her eyes when she looks at you and Mom, awe and a sad resignation you don’t really understand. “Henry broke the curse.”

 

Gramps’s eyebrows shoot up as he takes you and Mom in and you dash a hand against your eyes, forcing the tears away in front of him. But his eyes soften in a moment and he nods to both of you, smiling. “Curse-breaking does run in the family.” He glances down at the witch, no longer green-skinned but splayed out on the ground. “Should we lock her up at the station?”

 

“Yeah, I guess so. Keep an eye on her. We don’t know when magic might come back and kick all our asses. Or anything about the side effects of coming back here after that curse, I guess.” The air drifting in from outside the mayor’s mansion is tinted green, the last aftereffects of Pan’s original curse on Storybrooke.

 

You tune them out, turning back to your other mother, and you see that her eyes have never left you. “Henry,” she whispers again, and she’s still trembling and maybe you are too, finally exactly where you’ve needed to be for over a year and never known, never suspected, only dreamed of.

 

You remember old resentments, anger both legitimate and too emotional, and yet it all seems lost in the past now that you're here and you've been apart for so long. You've both struggled to find a balance in the other for so long but you'd never comprehended how empty your life is without Mom, how devastating it is to be so close and so distant; not until this moment where you're enveloped in her arms and it's a revelation at last, home in a place that’s only existed in once indistinct memories.

 

You’re still crying and she is too, tears bright against your faces as you press your foreheads together and you don’t remember her being so small, or is it you who’s grown? “I love you, Momma,” you whimper, clinging to the childish name as you do your mom, pulling yourself closer as she kisses the top of your head and turns your hair wet with tears.

 

You sit together, trapped in a place where time doesn’t matter and nothing has changed in thirteen years, lost in the familiar sensations of your mother’s skin and scent and touch, and it’s only once Mom shifts that you follow her gaze across the room to where Ma is leaning against a little table, eyes on you both and something uncomfortable and longing on her face.

 

You reach for her, an arm still wrapped around your adoptive mother. She’s still your Ma, and maybe it hasn’t been for most of your life but you _chose_ her, you loved her and you wanted her and you still want her here now that your family has reached a certain kind of completion, and you watch the relief and hope that plays at her lips when you and Mom both raise your eyebrows at her in tandem.

 

And at once, Ma’s arms are encircling you both as she drops to the floor beside you, pressing a kiss to your cheek as Mom leans back against her for support, and you all remain on the floor in an embrace, reunited as the family you’d never been before.

 

Your eyes wander back to the key table a few feet away, and you see the wallet-sized photograph of you still in its frame even after what it’s borne witness to today. It’s battered but undamaged, and you allow yourself a secret smile.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> To clarify, because apparently I have to, because I get a lot of Regal Believer fans reading this and idk, attempting to de-gay it- Regina and Emma are definitely doing it in this fic. They aren't braiding each other's hair in bed and Emma wasn't trying to help Regina get something out of her teeth when they made out! They are making steamy love every night and dreamy eyes every day, living the ~Henry has two mommies~ life. Henry saw only snippets of this because I was trying to protect his delicate eyes, not diminish a loving lady relationship to subtext to protect the delicate eyes of anti-types who wanted to read a fic without all that icky Swan Queen action. 
> 
> Hope you enjoyed. :) Cheers!


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